


don't you see? (it's my bucket list)

by santiagone



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst and Fluff, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff, Good times, also dorky team members because c'mon, and also bad times, bucket lists, but generally just all of the times, kind of sad but not really??, you need those weirdos around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 09:14:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5242811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/santiagone/pseuds/santiagone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I have one week, Fitz. One week. That’s seven days, one-hundred and sixty-eight hours, one thousand and eighty minutes. That’s how long I have to live. I know it sounds completely crazy, but I have a- a list. Of things I want to do. And-And I want you to come with me.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 'the beginning' or alternatively, 'the end'

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this fic was inspired by a lot of things. In Time, The Fault In Our Stars, Soulmate AUs, the whole lot! It's a bit of a mess (as with most things I write), but I quite like it and hopefully you do too~

_xx 168 hours_

 

“I have one week, Fitz. One week. That’s seven days, one-hundred and sixty-eight hours, one thousand and eighty minutes. That’s how long I have to live. I know it sounds completely crazy, but I have a-a list. Of things I want to do. And-And I want you to come with me. If you will.”

This is how she tells him, breathlessly, standing huddled on the porch of his doorstep to avoid the rain.

Fitz takes it exactly how she expects him too: not well.

He shakes his head adamantly at her, opening his mouth and closing it like he’s suddenly forgotten how to breathe, like his world has just been pulled out from under his feet (and perhaps it has).

“That’s- That’s not funny, Jemma.”

“I’m not joking.” She tells this to him gently, somehow matter-of-factly. It’s not that she’s _not_ afraid, more that she realises that she has to be strong for Fitz.

(Also, she’s all cried out.)

His eyes are pleading now, wild and watering with her favourite shade of blue, and she is painfully reminded of her love for Fitz. The fondness she feels for him has never been a new thing, but the butterfly feeling she has for him _is_. She notices the way his eyes glint when he gets excited, the small smile he reserves for the important people in his life, and the way he is quietly possessive over the few treasured friends he has. And for this she hates herself, because she hates that she’s become the kind of person who might potentially ruin the best thing in her life because she’s been greedy and she wants something more.

“Let me look at your timer,” he says thickly.

She fixes him with her gaze as warning. “Fitz..”

“Jemma.”

She doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to say no to that voice, so she lifts up her arm slowly and shows him the timer inked along her arm. These timers are the things that rule their lives. They count down the days you have left to live. Most go up to eighty years. For some lucky people, one hundred. The concept is scary but it really isn’t. Most people find comfort in knowing how long they have left to live, how long their bodies can sustain them.

Most people, because they have normal lifespans. Lifespans where they know they will live, perhaps happily, perhaps unhappily, but safe in the knowledge that they have the time to do so.

Then, there are the special cases. Cases like this, where something will happen at birth, in the uterus, just in the same way as one is born with a disability. Cases where timers will malfunction, short-circuit, decrease.

Jemma Simmons has always known that there was a chance this might happen, but to wake up one morning and find you have only a week left to live… well, it’s an eye-opener.

She tries to communicate all this to Fitz with her eyes, but he’s too distraught to pay attention. His fingers skim along her arm softly, like she is a priceless treasure, and she is not so blind as to ignore the shivers that travel up her spine.

“It’s not true,” he says finally, after the silence is too long to bear.

“It is.”

“It isn’t,” Fitz says again, and the intensity in his eyes is enough to make her mouth part. “Have you gone to the hospital? Mum has a friend who works there, I’m sure-”

“Fitz,” she cuts in softly, “if there was any hope, do you think I’d be here telling you this? I’ve tried everything already.” She’s crying now, and god, she hates it, because in her head she’d planned to be brave. Instead she’s here with tears streaming down her cheeks, but in some ways it’s okay, because Fitz is doing the same thing.

“Jemma..”

She’s smiling through her tears now, but it’s small and sad and quite frankly, pitiful, a weak strip of sunlight on a stormy day. “They always said this might happen, didn’t they?” she says unsteadily. “The doctors, I mean. It was a complicated birth, umbilical cord wrapped all around my head. They think that’s how the timer broke.”

Unexpectedly, she’s pulled into a hug, clinging tightly to this boy who smells of copper and sawdust, leaking tears into each other’s shirts, and she is reminded once again of why Fitz is her friend, why she has picked him, out of all the people, to begin (and now end)  this journey with.

“I’m sorry,” he says, because really, what else can be said?

 _‘I love you’_ she wants to return, but she doesn’t, because her hours are quickly dwindling and she doesn’t want to waste them by worrying, so instead she clings to him like he’s her only lifeline in the cruel world that is her ocean, and she says, “Me too.”

 

_xx 167 hours_

 

After she’s dried her tears, then cried in the kitchen with Mrs. Fitz, then redried her tears over warm chocolate-chip cookies, she sits on the couch with Fitz, intertwined so closely she’s not entirely sure where she ends and he begins.

“What’s this list?” Fitz asks, voice raspy. “The one you mentioned before, I mean.”

“I have a list of everything I want to do. Before I die," she says, and she's slipped into clinical Doctor mode without even meaning to.

He flinches. “And you really want to do this?”

“Yeah,” she tells him softly. “I do. And if you.. if you want, I'd like you to do it with me.”

Fitz nudges her foot with his own. “You don’t even need to ask.”

She takes a deep breath, because it feels as if a million weights have been lifted off her chest, and she smiles, because suddenly she feels more alive than ever, which is ironic, given that she is very close to dying.

“We start right away,” she warns.

Fitz nods, and then his hand stills from where he’s been tracing idle patterns on her ankle. “Did you come up with all of this right now? This list, I mean? Or..” he hesitates, “have you known all along?”

“I didn’t know,” she assures him, because this is him asking if she trusts him with all her heart. And she does, she does so much it physically _hurts_. “But there was.. there was always a thirty percent chance of this happening. And you know me. I…”

“Excel at preparation,” he finishes, and her smile is bittersweet.

 

_xx 166 hours_

 

When they’ve finally pulled themselves together, they arrange a meeting at Skye’s house, because hers is the biggest, and also the closest.

Her heart swells to see all her friends gathered together in one room, and it grows even more so when she reveals her news and there are tears from all around the room.

Skye is distraught, naturally, and not even hugs from Trip can quell her tears. Bobbi is sad but she has known enough loss to hold in her tears, and Mack pretends to be brave for everybody else’s sake. Surprisingly it is Hunter who cries, and she is deeply touched when the teasing, playful young man loses his bravado to pull her into a hug.

“I’ll miss you, Biochem,” he says.

“I’m not dead yet,” she replies, but the joke falls short.

Mack’s goodbye is curt, because they hadn’t known each other all too well, but she leans up into his ear right before he pulls away.

“You will, won’t you? Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid?”

“Like I could stop Fitz from doing anything concerning you,” Mack grins, but the promise is there.

Trip gives her a little salute and a sunshine smile, although there are tears brimming at the corner of his eyes.

“The best things always end too soon,” is his input, and she rolls her eyes.

“There’s no need to glamorize me because I’m dying.”

“I’m not,” he says, and it’s genuine. “That’s the truth.”

Bobbi pulls her into an immediate hug, and that one action conveys more than any words ever could, between the two of them.

“Take care, Jemma,” she says.

“You too,” Jemma responds, and then it’s Skye who’s throwing herself into Jemma’s arms, her salty tears dampening Jemma’s clean white shirt.

“You can’t go,” Skye sobs over and over, like if she says it enough times it will come true.

(It won’t.)

“I’m not going to. I’ll always be here,” she says, no matter how cheesy it sounds, because she knows Skye needs it right now.

“Aren’t you scared?” Skye sniffles eventually.

Jemma is rather surprised by this question, but after careful consideration, decides that oddly enough, she isn’t. There’s no room for fear here, only an odd sense of numbness. She hasn’t even any strength to cry. “No, I’m not scared. Are you?”

“I’m scared for you,” Skye says, and this truth is so honest that Jemma’s world is suddenly spinning, and she feels the urge to sit down before she gets too faint.

 

_xx 160 hours_

 

Later, when they’re all cried out and everybody is asleep, draped over each other in Skye’s living room, the glow of the TV illuminating their faces and snacks strewn all across the room, Jemma carefully climbs out from the tangle of limbs and hugs her bare arms to herself as she stares at the sleeping faces of her friends.

They all look so astonishingly  _young_ , and she feels incredibly guilty that she is the reason they have tear tracks on their faces, so she walks around the room until she has made sure each person is tucked gently into a blanket. She turns the TV off and draws the blinds, and she turns on the night-light because she knows Hunter is afraid of the dark (even though he’ll never admit it).

She leaves the crisps and drinks scattered over the floor because she’s certain someone will get hungry and eat it in the morning, so it’s not long before she’s edging open the door and padding onto the balcony with her feet bare and a blanket draped over her shoulders.

The city is pretty at this time of the night. The breeze is cold but the lights shine golden, and instantly Jemma is reminded that this will be one of the last nights she will ever see. She’s just thinking this when the door behind her slides open, and Coulson joins her at the balcony, setting a plastic bag down on the table.

“I heard,” is all he says.

She smiles faintly, because she's not surprised, not really. “Skye?”

“They’re all upset, you know.”

“I know.” She nods towards the bag. “What’s in there?”

Coulson grins wryly. “That’s classified. But it may or may not involve snacks for the crew.”

“The crew.”

“The crew,” he confirms.

She likes the sound of that. The crew. By giving it a name, it’s like it’s been stapled into their lives, seared into her hearts, and Jemma knows for certain that she will carry this memory to the grave (and perhaps beyond, if she was the sort to believe in that kind of thing).

They stand there in comfortable silence for what seems like eternity. She sways as the wind buffets her blanket and her hair and her pasty legs, until eventually Coulson breaks the quiet.

“You’re amazing, Jemma. And if you need anything…”

She’s about to decline, because that’s what she does. She is polite, she is proper, but then, she is a lot of things right now, so she pauses before the words can spill out, and instead, she says, “Actually, may I borrow your phone?”

He says of course and after she’s made several phone calls and said goodnight to Coulson, she heads back inside, feeling thoroughly pleased with herself. She tries to ignore the faint green glow from her timer as she crawls back into the empty space beside Fitz.

She’s very careful but he stirs anyway, blinking blearily up at her, and she’s suddenly reminded of that adorable little boy she met all those years ago.

“Jemma?”

“Shh,” she says. “Go back to sleep.” And she allows herself to tenderly run her fingers through his curls until his breaths have turned into snores, for she has learned too late to enjoy the simple pleasures in life.

 

_xx 154 hours_

 

They all wake up at roughly the same time, and Hunter continues his ritual of complaining about the lac of sleep  even though it’s a perfectly reasonable time in the morning. They break out the fruit and muesli bars that Coulson brought in last night, and Skye, Hunter and Fitz finish off last night’s snacks, much to everybody else's disapproval.

Eventually there’s a knock on the door, and Mack blinks in obvious surprise when he answers it. “May?”

Heads turn curiously, but Jemma is the only one who is unsurprised, rising to her feet with a small smile. “You came.”

“I did,” May says. She holds up a set of car keys and jangles them. “You have fifteen minutes to decide and get ready.”

Jemma takes a deep breath. “Okay.”

“I’m sorry, but _what_ exactly is happening here?” asks Hunter.

“Is everything alright?” Bobbi asks more considerately.

“So, I have a Bucket List,” Jemma says so quickly she's not sure if she's imagining it or if her words are really blurring together, “and this is one of the first things on my list. I’m leaving in about half an hour to get on a plane. And I was.. I was hoping that you could come with me?”

It doesn’t take a genius to know who she’s talking to, and her heart pounds when Fitz agrees without hesitation.

“Okay.”

“Then we leave in five minutes,” May says without missing a beat.

It's as simple as that, and each member pulls Jemma and Fitz into a tight hug.

“Don’t do anything stupid, alright?” Skye orders fiercely.

“You’d better come back to say goodbye,” Trip adds, and Jemma nods and makes promises with her all heart, because she cannot imagine anywhere else she’d rather end.

And later, when they’ve finally said all their goodbyes, and they leave the team waving tearfully at them from the windows, Jemma slips her hand into Fitz’s, without hesitation. He blinks nervously at her but she’s beyond the point of being shy now, so she doesn’t let go and he doesn’t pull away.

“Where are we going?” he asks as they walk down the driveway. Their hands swing as they walk, and Jemma thinks, _I could get used to this_. May is sitting at the wheel of a smart black car, talking on the phone, and she gives Jemma a nod and a tiny smile when she catches her eye.

“It’s a secret,” she tells him, “but we’re taking a plane. We might not come back here for a little while.”

She pulls open the door and they both climb into the backseat. Shotgun seat is taken up by a simple black bag, but Jemma doesn’t think she would have left Fitz’s side anyway, even if she does get carsick occasionally.

“What about my things?” Fitz asks, pulling down his seatbelt.

“I’ve already got them,” May calls from the front, and Jemma smothers a laugh at Fitz’s shocked expression.

 


	2. 'wish one' or alternatively, 'realisation'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They bicker like this all the way through the zoo, and Jemma thinks this is what she’s going to miss most. Not the moments she spends admiring the blue of his eyes, not the moments they spend working in the lab, not the moments when Fitz tucks a sleepy and slightly drunk Jemma to bed (although they all come in very close). No, she’ll miss the banter, the easy back-and-forth of friends who have been in each other’s company for too long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd just like to point out that I have never been to America, and therefore do not know anything about Washington!! I did do a little bit of research but mainly I just decided to wing it, so I'm sorry if I completely butchered anything!  
> The ending to this chapter was originally much sadder but I changed it because I'm a softy and I just want them to be happy.

_xx 153 hours and 25 minutes_

 

They’re sitting on the plane now, waiting for the last passengers to board, and by now Fitz has figured out where they’re going, although he doesn’t quite know why. He’s trying to be alert for her sake but she can tell that he’s not accustomed to being up so early.

Still, she tugs on his arm and points out the window as they take off, and they’re both so silent for a long time that she thinks he might have drifted off, until his hand skims her own and then pulls away quickly, like she’s toxic.

And in some ways, she thinks, she is. Jemma Simmons is a drug to Leopold Fitz. There’s always been something lingering under the surface of their friendship - she’s not so blind as to ignore it, but she’d always pushed it to the side out of fear. Fear, because she didn’t want to lose her best friend. But now.. she is a drug to Fitz. He’s addicted to her (and her to him), but she is now too dangerous for him, because in roughly one hundred and fifty-three hours, she will not be well enough, alive enough, _here_ enough to love Leopold Fitz.

So she understands why he is pulling away in the last hours of her life, but she can’t deny that it doesn’t hurt, because it does, it hurts like nothing else, tears her slowly-failing heart in half. Maybe she’s being selfish, but just for these last hours, just for this last week, she wants Fitz all to herself.

It’s too much to ask and she is a fool for believing so in the first place, so she blinks away these thoughts and smiles cheerily at Fitz.

“Do you think they’ll have Doctor Who on these TVs?”

Fitz looks incredibly like he wants to say something important to her, because he’s got that look in his eye, but just when she’s starting to feel something akin to hope, he returns her grin and reaches for the remote.

“I bloody well hope so. I can’t stand flights.”

She knows that she is likely wasting the little of her time she has left, but planes have always left her sleepy and right then she is perfectly content to curl up on Fitz’s shoulder and go to sleep, so that is exactly what she does.

 

_xx 150 hours_

 

They land at the airport approximately three hours later in Washington, DC, and Fitz’s smile is big as he lugs a bag behind him.

“I’ve always wanted to visit Washington,” he tells her excitedly.

She beams at him. “I know.”

May flags down a taxi and soon they’re bumping along the road. May exchanges small talk with the taxi driver as she flips through a map, but Jemma and Fitz don’t have much time for anything except staring out the windows.

“Where are we going now?” Fitz asks, although he’s grinning wildly. For now, the inevitably of her death is replaced by excitement.

“The hotel,” May informs, her eyes sliding to meet Jemma’s through the front mirror. “And then..”

Jemma realises that this is her cue, and she jumps in quickly. “Do you remember back in the Academy days, Fitz? You mentioned something about avionics and then we argued about it for ages?”

He nods eagerly. “And it ended with us compromising on a visit to Smithsonians?”

“Yes! Except we never got to go because - “

“Coulson offered us a job at SHIELD Industries and we couldn’t say no!”

She thinks she might just have finished being giddy with happiness (as she is every time they finish each other’s sentences) when May cranes to look at the two of them in the back.

“If you two are done,” this said wryly, but with a smile, “we’re at the hotel.”

 

_xx 149 hours and 37 minutes_

 

The hotel is nice, she’ll give it that. There’s a desk in the corner and a very nice bath tub and the customary overpriced snacks in the cupboard, but perhaps the best thing is the two single beds that take up the room.

She hadn’t asked, of course, but May seemed to know exactly what to do, and neither Fitz nor Jemma questioned it when she directed them to their room and headed off to find her own (the one upstairs).

Fitz throws his luggage on his bed and promptly starts emptying the contents of his suitcase in his haste to find his jacket, because he claims that he’s been ‘bloody freezing all plane ride’ - his words, not hers.

She tuts at his messiness and sweeps around after him, picking up his clothes and hanging them neatly up in the closet. He flushes a cherry red when she picks up his underwear, but she rolls her eyes and points him to the snack bar and he’s over it quickly enough.

And that’s how the conversation starts, her neatly packing away all their things, him stretched out on the bed with a half-eaten chocolate bar in his grasp.

“You don’t have to, you know,” he says quietly. “Waste your time on me, I mean.”

“Of course I do, Fitz. And I’m not _wasting_ time on you. I’m making the most of it. _With_ you.” She tells him this while focusing intently on her organising, because she knows if she looks up right now the truth will all come spilling out, and she can’t handle that right now. “You’re my best friend.”

“And you’re mine.”

She might even let herself believe that there is something hidden behind his friendly smile if it weren’t for the timer inked up her arm, counting down her demise.  Instead, she’s grateful for the sudden ring that comes from her phone.

“Answer that, will you? It’ll be May.”

 

_xx 149 hours_

 

They’re here at the Smithsonian Institute, and neither Jemma nor Fitz can contain their excitement. She feels like she is five years old all over again, dragging a friend and an exasperated caretaker by the arms.

Fitz is eager to head straight for the zoo, of course, but Jemma’s been planning this in her head ever since she first made that promise with Fitz, and she has precisely planned out the times that they need to be at each attraction, so she makes Fitz go and buy himself some snacks while she sits on a bench with May, carefully plotting out allotted times on the back of a paper napkin.

“You’re serious about this, then?” May asks.

Jemma pauses, glancing up to meet May’s expression. “I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.” _And I never will be again_ , that spiteful voice in her mind whispers.

And surprisingly, May smiles. “You’re a good kid. Both of you.”

“Really, we’re _hardly_ that much younger than you,” she scoffs, because she simply can’t resist, and Fitz saves May from a long rant by appearing with a bag of candy floss in one hand and a bag of popcorn in the other.

He offers them out to May hesitantly. “I wasn’t sure if you eat junk food, so there’s popcorn if you want..”

To Fitz’s obvious surprise, May takes the candy floss with a smirk, and then she’s gone, with instructions to meet her by the same bench when they’re finished.

Fitz gapes while Jemma unconsciously moves to make room for him on the bench. He throws himself beside her and offers her the bag of popcorn with a pout.

“I expected her to take the popcorn.”

“Popcorn isn’t exactly a healthy substitute for candy floss, Fitz.”

“What? It’s _corn_!”

She rolls her eyes at him and resists the very heavy urge to tip the bag of popcorn over his head. Instead she tuts and grabs some instead, because hey, if she’s dying, she might as well, right?

“Have you finished planning?” he asks through a mouthful of popcorn.

“Nearly,” she says, glancing up, and her breath is almost stolen away. Fitz looks absolutely ridiculous here, with his mouth full and his curls ruffled and his clothes un-ironed, but his smile is carefree and his eyes are alight and right then, she thinks she could kiss him.

“Jemma? Everything okay?”

She could, she _really_ could. But she shouldn’t. And so she doesn’t.

“Almost done,” she says instead, too cheerfully and too nonchalantly and too bright for him not to stare suspiciously at her, but she straightens out the crinkles in her paper and determinedly plays what has of late become her most-played game: _Avoid Fitz’s Eyes_ , and she asks, “What time do you want to stop for lunch?”

 

_xx 148 hours_

 

They set off on their trip with their bags of popcorn and their tickets, and Fitz is like an excited child the whole way through, in the adorable fashion that she rarely sees and always treasures.

They stop at exhibits and stare in fascination at the specimens, and occasionally they’ll make fun of grammatical errors or common mistakes found around the museum. Every so often she’ll pull out her phone and insist they get photographs, and he’ll groan every time and kick up a fuss, but he always does it eventually (if after a lot of griping).

Finally, when she’s digging in her pockets for her phone once more, Fitz finally gives up.

“Do you have to take a bloody photo for everything, Simmons?”

 _Oh, it’s last name basis now, is it?_ Jemma knows that tone all too well. This is Leopold I’m-quite-grumpy-with-you-right-now Fitz, and she has learned over the years just what to do when this situation arises, although sometimes she just can’t help her indignation, and often, she makes it worse.

“ _Yes_ , Fitz. Now, stop being a fusspot and come over here.”

“Please, Jemma,” Fitz groans. “You know I hate photos. If you’re trying to rub this in-”

“I’m not,” she says so suddenly she surprises even herself. “I just.. I just want you to have something to remember me by. Something to remember this when I’m.. when I’m gone. Okay? So please, Fitz. Photos. Just a few, please, I’m just asking because I…”

His gaze has softened but somehow it’s worse, because he’s got the expression of a kicked puppy, like the inevitability of her near death has just struck him.

“Jemma..”

“Please,” she interrupts, voice thick. “I don’t want to talk about it. Not right now. Let’s just enjoy this, okay?”

“Okay,” he says, and he leans in for a photo and squeezes her shoulder and smiles for the camera, and this is more than any words could ever convey, and she would cry right there in the museum if she didn’t want to ruin this day for Fitz.

(And after that, he doesn’t object to pictures.)

 

_xx 147 hours_

 

Next stop is the Air and Space museum, and they walk side-by-side, shoulders brushing, too close for friends but not close enough for lovers, and she smiles as she observes a frazzled looking teacher trying to rein her class together.

“Do you know,” she says conversationally, “that when I was bedridden with scoliosis, my father would-”

“Wheel your bed out and teach you about the stars? Yeah, I know. You’ve only told me that story a million times,” Fitz says, but his look is tender.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. You can tell me that story as many times as you’d like.”

“Yes, well,” she’s so flustered that the wrong thing spills out, “I’d better get started if we want to make it to two million. Seeing as I haven’t got all that much time.”

His expression is instantly wounded, but before she can apologise, there’s a tug on her shirt and they both whirl to find a little girl, face streaked with tears, asking if they’ve seen her class anywhere through sniffles.

It’s only after they’ve returned the little girl to her teacher, and only after she watches Fitz hug the little girl and murmur something to her, that Jemma bursts into tears, right there on the bottom floor of the Air and Space museum, despite how hard she’s been trying to keep positive.

“Jemma, what’s wrong?” he asks worriedly, and his arms are instantly encircling around her, and she’s trying to hold back her tears because she doesn’t want to ruin another one of his shirts (and also because blue is a very nice colour on him), but she just _c a n ’ t_.

“I’m sorry,” she hiccups. “I’m sorry, I just.. I was just thinking.. You and that girl, I just..”

He pats her back and she dissolves into tears once more, because she _wants_ to tell him, the problem just is that she can’t. Some things simply cannot be undone, no matter how much science you pour into them, and perhaps this is one of these things, Jemma thinks.

“I just.. I just realised that I will never have kids,” she says, and she leaves out the last part of her sentence because she’s not ready - no, because he’s not ready - and they sit there and she cries it out for a little while.

And after a while, when her sobs have turned into sniffles and she’s stopped getting such strange looks from passersby, he whispers into her hair.

“I asked that little girl why she picked us to help her, out of all people. And.. and do you know what she said?”

“What did she say?” she asks curiously, quietly, perhaps even hopefully.

“She said.. she said we reminded her of her mum and dad.”

 

_xx 145 hours_

 

Later, they stop for lunch at one of the small cafes just outside. She picks out a window seat while Fitz gets their orders, and for a while she just sits there, counting cars as they race past. Everybody is in such a hurry, and she wonders what would happen if everyone in the world just stopped to think for one measly second. Just _one_.

Although, before she’d had her innumerable seconds taken away from her, she’d been just as carefree and nonchalant as the rest of them, she supposes. It isn’t fair to judge.

Still, she can’t help but feel envious as she sees the people bustling past, engaged on their cellphones or laughing with their friends or shepherding their kids along. A sweet elderly couple stroll past with their hands clasped, and Jemma can’t help but think _lucky you_.

The feeling doesn’t go away when Fitz returns with their food, but she plasters on a smile and accepts the muffin and coffee even though she’s lost most of her appetite.

“What’s wrong?” he asks almost instantly, and she almost wants to laugh. Of course. It’s not that easy to fool Leopold Fitz, child prodigy, aspiring scientist, and best friend of eight years and counting. Still, it’s never hurt to try.

“Nothing,” she says, and at his disbelieving look, she smothers a smile and sighs. “I was just.. people-watching. And I was thinking about them.. and I was being selfish, I admit. Is it just…” She stirred uselessly at her cup of coffee. “Is it just so bad to wish that I could live for just a little longer?”

Suddenly there’s a hand over her own and a fierce gaze meeting hers, and Fitz shakes his head insistently, but he’s swallowing like he’s struggling to breathe, like he’s drowning, and she wants to make it better but she can’t, so she doesn’t.

“It’s not selfish. Wanting to be alive isn’t selfish. I don’t.. I can’t imagine a world without you, Jemma.”

“But you _will_ , won’t you?” she asks, self-preservation suddenly replaced with alarm. “You’re not to go off doing anything rash when I’m gone, understood?”

His gaze is beseeching, and she’s instantly ready to berate him when a waitress stops by to offer them some complimentary biscuits, and they’re forced to act like everything is normal, even when it feels like the world is falling apart. Isn’t it strange, Jemma thinks, how people cover things up? How someone could be literally dying inside and you’d never know. It’s an odd thought, and perhaps this is what spurs her to be gentler when she next speaks.

“Fitz?”

Fitz snaps to attention, his eyes unfocused, and she wonders what he could possibly be thinking so hard about. He opens his mouth, and for a minute there she thinks he’s going to start an argument right there in the middle of a coffee shop, but, as always, even now, Fitz surprises her. He visibly deflates, and his voice is miserable when he speaks.

“Can we please not talk about this? I don’t want to ruin your trip.”

She wants to protest, wants to make him promise, but the look in his eyes is killing her, so she doesn’t. Because this is her, isn’t it? She’s the one constantly bringing him pain, and she feels horribly, shatteringly guilty.

“Okay,” she says instead. “Okay.”

He smiles at her in obvious relief, but she’s determined not to forget about this conversation. They will continue this later, when they both feel better.

 

_xx 143 hours_

 

Two hours and one museum later, they finally head to the destination she knows Fitz has been waiting for: the zoo.

The atmosphere is relaxed and light-hearted now - they grin and joke and smile, and every time their shoulders brush her heart thumps just like in eighth grade when she’d developed her first crush on a handsome boy three years older than her (but not even _near_ her intellectual level).

He doesn’t mention their conversation so she doesn’t either, and if Jemma tugs her sleeve down far enough to hide the timer, she can almost pretend that it’s just a fun day out with Fitz, visiting the zoo.

“I can’t believe we’re here,” he says to her excitedly, and even she can’t smother a smile at his expression.

“You have May to thank for that,” she says, nose already buried in a large brochure. “Oh, look! They have a giant panda cub!”

“I don’t care about the giant panda cub, where are the monkeys?”

“Ugh, Fitz! Honestly, all you ever talk about is monkeys.”

Fitz pouts, and she thinks he could easily rival the cute little boy at the ticket booth for puppy eyes. “Because I want to see them! Think about it, Jemma. Their cute little faces, their adorable monkey hands - wouldn’t it be helpful if we had one to help us out in the lab?”

She rolls her eyes because he is insufferable and brilliant and unfairly beautiful, and she thwacks him with the brochure just because she can. “We’ve gone over this a million times, Fitz. I won’t accept any living organisms in the lab!”

“Oh, really?” Fitz counters, all full of wit and bravado. “What about Marie?”

“The cat?”

“Of course the cat-”

“You’re _still_ going on about the cat-”

“-honestly, what else would I be talking about-”

“-it’s like you never talk about anything else, I swear-”

“-I mean, who the hell brings a bloody _cat_ into the lab-”

 _“I_ do!” she says defensively, although the effect is somewhat lost, because she’s grinning like a fool. “Besides, it was only the liver.”

“And you left it next to my lunch! I’ll never eat another sandwich again,” he groans.

She raises an eyebrow. “You weren’t saying that when I made you a prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella the other day.”

“That’s different. Those aren’t just sandwiches, they’re works of art.”

They bicker like this all the way through the zoo, and Jemma thinks this is what she’s going to miss most. Not the moments she spends admiring the blue of his eyes, not the moments they spend working in the lab, not the moments when Fitz tucks a sleepy and slightly drunk Jemma to bed (although they all come in very close). No, she’ll miss the banter, the easy back-and-forth of friends who have been in each other’s company for too long.

They wander past exhibits, and she takes pride in rattling off facts about every animal they pass, much to Fitz’s exasperation and the other zoo-goers awe and amusement.

“Did you know that the giant panda has the largest molar teeth of _any_ carnivore?”

“As far as we know, Sumatran tigers are the smallest tiger in the species.”

“Fitz, look! An arapaima! They’re one of the largest freshwater fish in the world. Isn’t that exciting?”

She continues like this until they finally reach the destination she knows Fitz has been patiently waiting for this entire time - the monkey exhibit. She has about a million facts stored in her head, but she keeps quiet, because right now she’d rather commit Fitz’s exhilarated expression to her memory forever.

They’re sweet little things, squeaking and swinging and putting on an impressive show, and eventually, they’re waved away from the exhibit and forced to move on to the next.

“Are you satisfied now that you’ve seen the monkeys?” she teases, hugging his arm lightly.

He turns to her, and he says slowly, “Did you know, a group of monkeys is called a troop?”

She can’t help but laugh at him. “Yes, I did. Come on, then, let’s go and Skype _our_ troop.”

 

_xx 141 hours_

 

They do indeed Skype everybody else, right there in the middle of the zoo, perched on a park bench with a phone held tightly in Jemma’s grasp. Fitz scoffs down a hot dog beside her, and she’s just berating him for what seems the millionth time when the call is picked up on the other end.

“Jemma! Fitz!” cheers a voice, and Skye’s familiar features cloud up the camera. She abandons her obvious happiness to frown curiously at Fitz. “Are you eating meat in a zoo?”

“What’s wrong with that?” Fitz splutters.

“Well, duh, you’re surrounded by animals, eating an animal. Don’t you feel guilty?”

“It’s not as if this meat actually _comes_ from any of these animals! I’m not just snacking on the leg of a giraffe, Skye.”

Jemma’s perfectly content to let them keep arguing, even if her heart does twinge slightly at the way Skye makes Fitz smile, but there’s a kerfuffle at the other end and Skye is pushed to the side until she’s barely peeking into the frame, and lots of other new faces appear in the video. Trip, Hunter, Bobbi, Mack - even Coulson waves from the background, and Jemma’s heart swells to triple its size.

“Hi,” she says, because that’s all she can really manage.

There’s a chorus of hellos from the group, and then a lot of jostling as they all fight for a good view (and by all, she most means Hunter, Trip and Skye). Fitz and Jemma watch in amusement until eventually Bobbi rolls her eyes and swivels the screen to face her instead.

“We’ll have allotted times to talk, okay? Ten minutes each - if you’re lucky,” Bobbi announces smoothly. There’s immediately clamours of going first, but Bobbi shoots them a glare so fierce Jemma’s glad she’s never been on the receiving end of it. Everybody falls silent, and the blonde smiles smugly. “Seeing as I came up with the idea, _I’ll_ go first. The rest can fight it out.”

The background noise starts up again, and Jemma can’t help but laugh at Bobbi’s exasperated expression.

“Honestly, they’re like children. I think you and I are the only sane ones here.”

Fitz looks vaguely offended. “Hey!”

Bobbi shrugs. “Sorry little guy, but you’re just as bad.” She smiles kindly. “I’m sure Jemma knows.”

“I do.” Jemma nods eagerly, and Fitz huffs from beside her.

“Want to hear the latest scandals?” Bobbi suggests, and at Jemma and Fitz’s agreement, she spirals off into some easy, humorous stories that make Jemma smile and Fitz scoff with the improbability. She might do that too, but she’s far too polite, and besides, she likes Bobbi, so she nods and laughs and finds that this is maybe exactly what she needs to feel at least somewhat normal.

All too soon the ten minutes is up, and Bobbi is being replaced by Hunter, who somehow managed to beat all the others to the chair.

“Hey, Seventeen,” he says, and she can’t help but roll her eyes at the nickname. He’d picked it up ever since discovering her and Fitz had PhD’s by the age of seventeen, and never dropped it since. “Hey, Monkey.”

“Okay, just because I have an affinity for monkeys, doesn’t mean I like being called one,” says Fitz indignantly.

Hunter raises his hands. “Touchy today, aren’t we?”

She scoffs and then they talk about the silliest things - from his rants about Bobbi to the brand of shoes he’s wearing, to the speculation that yes, they definitely _would_ be arrested if they fed Skye to the tigers.

Then Hunter’s being shoved out of frame and Skye sits in the seat instead, beaming through the screen.

“Tell me about the monkeys,” she orders immediately, and this is Fitz’s turn to shine, arms waving about exaggeratedly and his eyes glinting in excitement, and okay, so maybe pretending that her side of the bench is damp just so she can shift closer is a bit shallow, but Jemma is really quite far from minding at this point.

Triplett jumps in with his familiar smile, trading stories with Fitz and siding with him against Skye, and Jemma is very glad that the two have gotten past the stage of awkward dislike. She still can’t fathom why Fitz took such an instant hatred for Trip, but Fitz is a man of many quirks, and if she spent her entire life trying to unravel them all she wouldn’t have any hours to left spare (especially now).

After Trip it’s Mack, and together they have a rather heated discussion about Mack’s latest properties, with Jemma and Fitz taking opposite sides, and Mack jumping between the two, negating positive and negative views for the both of them.

Coulson doesn’t talk much, because he’s busy, but he stops long enough to smile and wave at the camera and ask how they’re doing and how their day’s been.

“Good,” Fitz says.

Jemma, glancing sideways at Fitz, adds, “Perfect.” And then she spiels off onto some rant about the chinchillas, because she can feel Fitz’s gaze on her, and she doesn’t want him to get burned in her inevitable inferno.

 

_xx 140 hours_

Once they’ve done, they stop by the gift shop, and they spend far too long deliberating over which stuffed toy is best suited for them to take home. She takes great joy in pointing out the physical inaccuracies of various animals and wandering around the shop while Fitz scours the shelves for the perfect souvenir.

During this time she befriends three teenagers by the name of Donnie, Seth and Callie, by which she’d struck up a conversation by settling their argument over what they believed would happen in the afterlife. After a particularly long lesson about thermodynamics, Seth crosses his arms and stares at her.

“You’re really smart.”

She can’t help but grin. “So I’ve been told. You must be too, if you can keep up with my ramblings.”

“We’re scientists,” Callie pipes up eagerly. “Or at least, training to be. We go to the Academy.”

Jemma brightens immediately. “The Academy! Oh, so did I! I graduated a while ago, but it’s lovely there, isn’t it?”

Seth frowns. “Hang on.. but you don’t look that old.”

Donnie blinks for a few seconds, looking like he’s puzzling something out. “What’d you say your name was?”

“I didn’t,” she says politely. “I’m Jemma.”

All three’s eyes widen simultaneously, and she wonders if she’s done something wrong.

“You’re Jemma Simmons!” gasps Callie.

“And that must be Leo Fitz!” Donnie stares slack-jawed at Fitz, and Jemma wonders if she was ever this naive and adoring.

“Weaver talks about you all the time,” Seth explains rapidly. “You’re like.. her favourite students. I can’t believe we got to meet you! What are you doing in Washington? I thought you were based somewhere else?”

The smile almost slips off her face there. Instead, she gives them a rueful look. “I’m off-duty, I’m afraid. My timer..” She holds up her hand, and all three of them suddenly look less cheerful.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Simmons,” Donnie says quietly.

She shrugs, in a what-can-you-do? fashion. “It’s alright. I’ve gotten used to the idea. I’m just worried about…” She says nothing, but her gaze drifts to Fitz instinctively.

“I wish I had a friend like that,” Callie says wistfully. At the other boys’ indignant expression, she rolls her eyes and adds, “You know what I mean. FitzSimmons.. you guys are legendary. It’s like what everybody says about finding your soulmate and finding your other half or whatever. It’s sweet.”

Jemma finds that incredibly cheesy and scientifically inaccurate, but she can’t deny the smile that grows as she stares at Fitz. He waves and grins at her, and she knows that he’s found his desired stuffed animal and it’s time for them to go.

“I know,” she says to Callie instead, and then introduces Fitz with a winning smile and their shoulders brushing and a feeling she can’t entirely place singing through her veins. She feels warm and tingly and exquisitely happy, and she can’t place it right now but later she’ll look back and associate this feeling with undeniable, indescribable _love_.

(She doesn’t even blink when the woman at the check-out tells them what a lovely couple they are, although Fitz splutters and coughs and remains beet red the entire ride home, until she innocently asks him whether he got sunburnt on their excursion - the answer is no.)

 

_xx 139 hours_

 

As they stroll out of the zoo, too close together for the social norm, she smiles brightly at him and says, “Number one.”

He frowns. “Sorry?”

“Number one,” she repeats, her heart light with all the good things in the world. “On my bucketlist. Visit Smithsonian’s with Fitz. Check.”

Fitz’s hand grazes hers unintentionally (or at least, she’s pretty sure it’s unintentional), and he grins madly at her, and she is reminded all over again exactly why she is in love with Leopold Fitz.

“Check,” he repeats, and they walk through the gates.

 

_xx 138 hours_

 

She tries not to deliberate why, exactly, she’s taking so long to pick out a simple outfit for dinner. It’s her and Fitz and May, it’s nothing special. Honestly, she’s been out to dinner with them loads of times, why should she bother with a pretty dress and curly hair? It’s definitely, totally not worth it, not for Fitz and May and the faceless waiter that will be serving them.

(Except it totally is, because Fitz’s expression leaves her glowing the rest of the evening.)

 

_xx 137 hours and 22 minutes_

 

They pick a quaint little restaurant on the street corner, where the atmosphere is quiet and romantic and friendly. There’s a few kids and a noisy party of people in the corner, but for the most part it is mostly romantic couples, and when May gets up to go to the bathroom Jemma allows herself those five rare minutes to pretend that her and Fitz are the ones on a date. That he is the one telling her how pretty she looks over the lit candles, the one who pulls her chair out for her before she sits down, the one who shyly tries to compliment her and flubs it with every passing remark.

(He does all these things anyway, but she does not allow them to be in a romantic sense, because she knows that the timer on her wrist does not allow for delusions like these.)

 

_xx 133 hours_

 

They’re supposed to be sleeping, because it's either very late at night or very early in the morning, but for some reason she just can’t fall asleep. The glow of her timer is too harsh against the white sheets of her single bed, and she finds herself covering her arm in blankets to block out the light.

She lies in silence and listens to his breathing. Slow, but uneven, and this is how she knows he is also awake. She doesn’t dare to speak a word, because Fitz has been spending far too much time on her recently, but then he rolls over and they find themselves staring at each other from across the room. She’s not sure if he can see her, but the faint city lights are shining on his bed and she can see the glow reflected in his eyes.

“Hi,” she whispers.

“Still awake?” he murmurs back.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Yeah. You’ve got your thinking face on.”

“Didn’t know I had a thinking face.”

“You have a lot of faces.”

This is a new thing, muted flirting from in the middle of the night, both too sleepy to rein themselves in and curled up in the warmth of their crisp hotel duvets, but she likes it. “Which face do you like best?”

“I like all of your faces.”

She stays silent for a long while.

Eventually he says, “Except your crying face. You still look pretty when you cry, it’s just.. I don’t know how to make you feel better.”

Honestly said; “You always make me feel better.”

“Not this time,” Fitz says, and they both know they’ve struck the heart of the conversation. Nobody says anything, and for a minute she thinks he’s fallen asleep, until he speaks again. "I'm.. I'm really scared, Jemma."

"So am I," she whispers.

"It's so unfair," Fitz says fiercely. "We've done so many things for so many people. Why us? What did we ever do to this bloody universe?"

She can't help but smile in spite of herself. "I doubt that the universe planned this, Fitz. Sometimes these things just happen."

It's odd, how calm she feels about this whole situation. Although in some ways, she supposes that the situation is easier for her. She's the one losing her life, but she doesn't have to deal with the aftermath. If it were Fitz.. her throat closes up and she digs her fingers into her pillow. 

"Yeah, well..." he seems to want to say something else, but changes tack last moment. "I just feel like we lost so much time. What am I supposed to do when you're gone?"

The answer comes easily to her. "Continue on. Be Fitz. You have the team, your mum, SHIELD. The world will go on without me."

"Sometimes I feel like it won't," he murmurs, and she has nothing to say to that, so instead she rolls over until she is staring up at the ceiling, so very tired and yet impossibly wide awake.

"Goodnight, Fitz."

"Night, Jemma."


	3. 'wish two' or alternatively, 'family'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s terribly cheesy, and as a scientist of resolute logic she is really breaking her own rules, but she wants to commit Fitz to her memory, wants to remember the slope of his lips or the angle of his nose or the tint to his ears even beyond death. She doesn’t believe in the afterlife, but she believes in the first law of thermodynamics, and a tiny part of her hopes that maybe if she tries hard enough her particles will be reborn and drift to Fitz once more, never again as Jemma Simmons, but perhaps a microbe or his pet goldfish or maybe even - god forbid - a monkey, if Coulson ever caves in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are! This may be the last update for December as I am currently focusing on Secret Santa, but I hope you enjoy this nonetheless!  
> (Also, as a general shout-out, my Tumblr is @perthshirekisses, and while I am terrible at running it, I'm always happy to chat.)

_xx 124 hours_

 

She wakes up to light filtering through the windows, and even though it’s morning and she knows how much Fitz likes to sleep, when she rolls over she’s surprised to see him with his eyes wide open, fingers curled into his pillow and a stare so intense that she inhales quickly.

“Fitz? You’re awake?”

“Yeah,” he murmurs, and then he blinks and the look is immediately gone, so quick that she almost wonders if she imagined it. “Hard to sleep.” She opens his mouth to ask why, but he sits up abruptly before she can. “I’m hungry.”

Jemma can’t help but roll her eyes. Banter is fun, banter is easy, banter doesn’t force her to think about what will happen in approximately.. one hundred and twenty-four hours.

So she shakes her head in fond exasperation and says, “You’re always hungry,” and then she sweeps out of bed to get dressed, and that is how their day begins.

 

_xx 123 hours and 35 minutes_

 

They head down to the hotel’s breakfast buffet, and they find May waiting for them patiently at a table, flipping through a hotel brochure almost lazily.

“Good morning, May,” she says with a cheery smile, and May nods to the seats in front of her, but her eyes are trained on Jemma's when she says, “Simmons,” and she knows immediately that she’s wanted for planning.

“Fitz,” she says, “do you mind getting me something to eat too?”

He frowns, clearly suspecting, but after a moment he gives a little confused nod. “Okay. What do you want?”

She smiles. “Surprise me.”

And it’s only when he’s gone that May pulls out the plane tickets she’d had stowed under her plate. “This is still where you want to go?”

Jemma nods. “Yes. I’m positive.” She knows that May isn’t trying to put her off - she’s only making sure. She knows May is infamous for being ‘ _The Cavalry_ ’, a stoic, composed agent, but sometimes it’s hard for people to remember that Melinda May is a human being too. Jemma understands this, now more than ever, and she doesn’t think she has ever been more grateful.

“You have forty minutes to pack your things, then,” May says with a small smile. “Our plane leaves in two hours.”

 

_xx 123 hours_

 

They arrive at the airport five minutes early, and although he never says anything, Jemma knows that Fitz is brimming with curiosity, wondering where they’re going to go.

She notices that he glances around constantly, looking for clues and tell-tale signs. He even asks her subtle questions like ‘how long is the flight, Jemma?’, and she’ll lightly divert the conversation with a knowing smile to remind him that she has three PhD’s and is every bit as smart as him, perhaps even more so.

"But only because you love homework more than life itself," Fitz interjects, and that little comment gets an ' _oh, fitz!'_.

Finally, when May has diverted off to make some phone calls, Jemma and Fitz wander into one of those small, generally messy, airport donut stores. They pick a seat by the window, overlooking the runway as planes slowly back out and passengers board, and she waits until he gets up to go to the bathroom before rooting around in her bag.

When he comes back, there’s two sets of tickets laid neatly on the table, and his eyes widen as he looks at the destination described.

“Jemma…” he says, and it’s almost like he’s warning her.

She beams at him. “Happy?”

“Very,” he breathes, but then he looks uncertainly at her. “Jemma.. I don’t want to waste your.. your time. I can go another time, I don’t need-”

Before he can go on, she leans forwards and threads her fingers through his, and he immediately stops talking, eyes flickering down to their hands linked on the table.

“Fitz,” she says firmly, “shut up.”

And he does, and it is unspoken between them that she knows she is running out of time, but that she wants to do this anyway, and while yes, it is mostly for Fitz, a little part of it is for herself too.

“Besides,” she adds, “I’m positive your Gran loves me more anyway.”

And this is how she tells Fitz that they are going to Glasgow.

 

_xx 122 hours and five minutes_

 

The boarding call for Glasgow has been called, and Fitz and Jemma stand somewhere near the back of the queue, and she can’t help but bite her nails nervously at the fact that she cannot see May anywhere.

“It’s fine,” Fitz says reassuringly. “It’s May. I don’t think ‘late’ is even in her vocabulary. She’s probably already on the plane, waiting for us.”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Jemma counters, leaning on her toes to get a better view and cursing the particularly tall family blocking her way. “I don’t want to leave without her.”

“She can catch another plane,” says Fitz, and strangely, she can almost detect a plea in his voice, and suddenly there’s a gentle grip on her arm. When she turns to stare at him questioningly, he swallows. “It’s not her time I’m worried about.”

And so, reluctant though she may be, she and Fitz dog after the people in front obediently, and it is only when they are the third passengers up in the queue that the other woman appears.

“May!” she calls in relief, but May only smiles, and immediately Jemma knows that she never intended to come with them to Glasgow.

“I have to go back,” she explains. “Andrew needs my help. Good luck.”

“You too,” Fitz says immediately.

Before she can over think it (as Jemma is known to do), she throws herself into May’s arms. She is stiff at first, but eventually she relaxes into Jemma’s embrace, and Jemma pulls back, trying to wipe her moist eyes hastily.

“Will I see you again?”

Honestly said; “I don’t know. We'll see - but I'll try.”

There are no heartfelt speeches or dramatic goodbyes. There is only a nod from May and curious gazes from passing onlookers, and Jemma can’t help but wonder if this is the last she’ll ever see of Melinda May: now just a figure disappearing into the bustling crowds of Washington Airport.

“Jemma,” Fitz says quietly, and suddenly they’ve reached the woman who is waiting, hand outstretched for their tickets, concern etched upon her features.

“I’m sorry,” Jemma blurts out because she needs to, because she is sick of being stared at, because right then, it has properly, _properly_ hit her, this predicament that she is in. “I just.. I’m going to be gone in one hundred and twenty-two hours.”

There’s sympathetic murmurs from the crowd and apologetic words from the stewardess, but all Jemma can really register is Fitz’s hand clasped in hers, the slope of his fingers that she has long since committed to memory. She wonders, absently, how many people have held Leopold Fitz’s hand before her. And, alternatively, how many people will hold his hand after her.

Jemma wonders about this, silently, and she does not speak as the woman hands their tickets back, as Fitz nudges her worriedly, or even when the hostess bites her lip and upgrades them to first class against regulations.

And eventually, when they settle into their fancy seats with the fancy glasses of wine and the fancy cushions, she forces herself to let go of Fitz’s hand. He seems somewhat hurt, but he doesn’t argue, and without further adieu, she smiles at him and pulls a headset over her ears (courtesy of Skye), and she falls asleep with the familiar voices of Harry, Ron and Hermione buzzing in her ears, curls splayed on Fitz’s chest as she drools onto his shoulder.

 

_xx 117 hours_

 

She wakes up to feel Fitz fidgeting, bouncing his leg up and down in the way he gets when he’s either nervous or impatient. Jemma moves back slightly to peer up at him, and he winces.

“Did I wake you up? Sorry.”

She blinks blearily. “No, you didn’t. Something wrong?”

Fitz at least has the decency to look sheepish. “Well, I need to use the bathroom, but you looked very peaceful sleeping.”

She opens her mouth, but he cuts in quickly. “Can you tell me off when I get back? I really need to go.”

And because he is Fitz, because he was content to let her drool on him for about four hours, she rolls her eyes and shoves him. “Go on, then. But I’ll have you know that the lecture will be _twice_ as worse when you return.”

_xx 113 hours_

 

They touch down at Glasgow airport, and they spend the next thirty minutes trying to locate Jemma’s bag, to no luck whatsoever.

“I can’t believe they’re not more concerned about your bag,” Fitz fumes as they stroll out of the airport. Oddly, she’s not that concerned, although Jemma Simmons has always liked to be well-equipped and prepared.

“It’s fine, Fitz,” she assures him. “Clothes and toiletries are just material possessions. I can get them anywhere I’d like.”

Fitz rolls his eyes. “That is _such_ a Simmons thing to say.”

She’s about to retort in full indignation, when something else catches her attention and her playful expression turns into a fully-fledged smile instead. “Tell that to your Gran.”

Fitz’s eyes widen a fraction, and soon he’s increasing his pace, tugging her along by the arm. An elderly woman with curly grey hair and an expression she can only describe as ‘determined’ rushes towards them, her eyes filled with tears, and Jemma stands by and smiles to herself as grandmother and grandchild embrace each other.

And then suddenly Jemma’s being enveloped in an equally firm hug, and all she can think about is the distinct fact that Christine Fitz hugs just like Leo Fitz does: firm and loving, like she’s the anchor to the world.

“I swear you two get taller every year,” Christine says, pulling back with a huge grin.

Fitz scoffs, but the effect is slightly ruined by the tears on his cheeks. “That’s generally how it works, Gran.”

Christine shoots him a stern look, and she somehow manages to pull this off while still beaming. “No cheek from you, young man. Come on now, you two must be freezing! What’s the weather like in America? How’s your Mum doing, Leo? Jemma, dear, where’s your suitcase?”

Jemma and Fitz answer these questions easily as they follow Christine to the car. Not once do they mention Jemma’s timer, and she is inexplicably grateful for that.

 

_xx 111 hours_

 

Christine Fitz’s house is just as Jemma remembers it from all those Christmas visits. It’s small and homely and quaint, and Christine starts up a fire as soon as they get in, and before Jemma knows it they’re sitting in the dining room, mugs of tea in their grasp and Magpie, the cat, curled up on top of the sofa chair.

“Tell me everything,” Christine orders, and with one look to spare at Fitz, every single detail spills out of Jemma’s lips until she is left breathless at the end of it all, and yet her eyes are dry.

When she glances over she can see Fitz staring at his lap, hands gripped so tightly to his mug his knuckles have turned white, and she instinctively slips a hand onto his leg.

“I’m sorry, Jemma,” Christine says finally, and Jemma gives her a little shrug.

“It’s alright. I’m not worried about myself.”

They lock eyes, and they both know who Jemma _is_ worried for.

“Leo, dear,” Christine says, “would you mind getting your dear old Nan a cup of tea? Also, how about those sugar cookies you love?”

Fitz groans. “I liked those when I was _five_ , Gran.”

Christine raises one eyebrow. “Leopold Fitz, are you declining an offer of sugar cookies?”

A beat, and then: “No.”

As soon as Fitz is gone, Christine leans forward and pats Jemma on the hand. “Tell me everything. Properly, this time.”

And so she does. Jemma spills everything to Christine Fitz, spills her thoughts and dreams and worries and aspirations until her throat is kind of sore and she’s started crying somewhere along the line, and before she knows it she’s being hugged tightly.

“What are you most worried about, Jemma?” Christine murmurs over her shoulder.

“Fitz,” she says, and it’s almost instinctive. “I’m worried about what’s going to happen when I’m gone. I tried talking to him in the cafe, but he wouldn’t tell me anything.  I know he’ll be okay, but I just.. I don’t..”

“It’s alright, dear,” Christine says, patting her back soothingly. “You forget that Leo has me, and his mum, and all his friends. Do you think we would let him be anything other than brilliant?”

“No,” Jemma sniffles, and she feels five years old all over again, crying because she’d lost her teddy at the park.

“Exactly.” There’s a long pause, and then; “Do you love him?”

Jemma jerks from Christine’s embrace, and she can feel herself going pink. “I.. Yes. Of course. But I don’t..”

“It’s okay,” Christine says kindly. “There are many ways to love someone. Leo loves his mum. He loves me, he loves his friends, he loved his dad. But I have never seen him love anyone like he loves you.”

They sit in silence for a long time, a young girl pulling strength from a wizened woman in front of the fireplace, and Jemma doesn’t know it now, but she will remember those words for the rest of her life.

And then, Fitz comes in making such an obvious ruckus that she wonders whether he’d been listening from the kitchen the entire time.

 

_xx 107 hours_

 

They catch up and chat, and Fitz meets up with some old childhood friends from around the neighbourhood. They’re all friendly and welcoming, and they welcome her like she is an old friend, sealing her into the family as soon as they see the way Fitz introduces her with that little smile on his face.

Fitz’s hand brushes over her back as he gently nudges her forward, she can see him staring at her out of the corner of her eye, and his hand lingers on hers a little too long when they both reach for the door handle. They have never known physical boundaries, not really, but this is different, _intimate_. And yet, he does it like he doesn’t even realise he’s doing it, like he’s moving unconsciously. Jemma wonders if it has always been like this; if she was always just too blind to notice it before.

But she’s too afraid to start anything and he doesn’t even mention it, so they go on as usual, trudging down the cobbled streets in their thick coats and woollen hats, waving and smiling and chatting to anybody who recognises Fitz (which is, surprisingly, quite a lot).

 

_xx 103 hours_

When they finally get back to the doorstep, cold and dripping from the chilly weather, a delicious scent wafts through the air and makes her mouth water, and she fixes Fitz with a questioning look as they undo their boots and shake them free of snow, shivering in front of Christine Fitz’s door.

“Gran’s roast,” Fitz explains, eyes lit up in delight. His cheeks are flushed with cold and his nose is button red, and perhaps in another universe, this would be the moment she would peck him on the nose and use his body heat to warm her own.

Instead, she smiles at him and shakes out her hair, fingers numb. “I’m guessing it’s good?”

“The best.”

As soon as they creak open the door, Christine is on them in a flurry, a whirlwind of vitality even considering her old age. “You must be freezing! Oh, Jemma, look at you, you’re practically a ghost. Leo, didn’t you think to give her your coat?”

Fitz blushes. “I..”

“It’s okay!” Jemma cuts in, choosing not to mention that he’d fussed over her the entire day, with the excuse that he hated cold hands. “I lost my suitcase at the airport.”

“You’ll need to have a shower, then, that’ll warm you up,” Christine says decisively, spinning them both into her house and shutting the door firmly. “I’ve got no clothes that’d fit you, dearie, but I’m sure Leo has an old shirt or something.”

“ _Gran!_ ” Fitz groans, but Jemma can’t help but grin cheekily at him.

“I’ll try to pick your least embarrassing shirt, Fitz.”

She laughs at Fitz’s complaints and wanders up the stairs, until she locates the last door on the landing. It’s a small, quaint little room with blue walls and posters strung up, and she is reminded that this is where Fitz spent most of his teenage years, before he had gotten his scholarship to the Academy and earned enough money to move him and his mum overseas.

Jemma likes that Christine kept the room like this; intact, like teenage Fitz had just popped out for a while and would be back any minute. She likes that Fitz kept his room unashamedly geeky, with his action figures and text books and mathematical sketches set up on his dresser.

She smiles and takes that moment just to explore the room, running her fingers across the posters, squinting at the messily scrawled notes in Fitz’s books, lies down on his bed and imagines a younger Fitz doing the same thing, counting the spots on the ceiling and wondering what was in store for him in the future.

And eventually, she pulls open the drawers and fishes out an old shirt - a comfy thing supporting Star Wars that even lanky teenage Fitz must have found oversized.

She showers, and then she pulls it on, and never before has Jemma drawn such comfort from an item of clothing, but it still smells like him and she thinks she might have to smuggle it back home when nobody's watching.

But perhaps the best part is when she comes back down and Fitz’s eyes widen, and he blushes and stutters and fidgets, and somehow Jemma feels like she is a teenager on her very first date all over again.

 

_xx 102 hours_

 

Dinner is nice. They don’t sit at the table, like Jemma’s family would do, but instead they curl up by the telly with their plates on their laps and blankets draped over their legs. They watch some irrelevant show about romance and heartbreak and betrayal that Jemma doesn’t really care for, but Christine loves it and Fitz likes it (despite his claims that he doesn't), so she pretends to be drawn into the show, cheering at the right moments and complaining at the ads, when in reality she is studying every feature of Fitz’s face.

It’s terribly cheesy, and as a scientist of resolute logic she is really breaking her own rules, but she wants to commit Fitz to her memory, wants to remember the slope of his lips or the angle of his nose or the tint to his ears even beyond death. She doesn’t believe in the afterlife, but she believes in the first law of thermodynamics, and a tiny part of her hopes that maybe if she tries hard enough her particles will be reborn and drift to Fitz once more, never again as Jemma Simmons, but perhaps a microbe or his pet goldfish or maybe even - god forbid - a monkey, if Coulson ever caves in.

 

_xx 97 hours_

 

When she wakes up the room is dark, and Christine is gone. Instead she’s curled up with her head buried in the crook of Fitz’s neck, a blanket draped over them both, and wow - she’s been falling asleep on Fitz a lot recently.

She doesn’t want to wake him because he looks adorable sleeping, but his feet are sticking out of the blanket and the fire has long since died out, and she’s sure they’ll both catch a deathly cold if they don’t get somewhere warmer.

“Fitz,” she calls gently. “Fitz.”

“Hmm? Jemma?”

“Yes, it’s Jemma.”

He blinks blearily at her. “What time is it?”

“Very late. We should be going to bed,” she tells him, although she makes no attempt to move.

“Mmm. What happened?”

“In real life? We fell asleep. On the show? I’ve no idea. I’m pretty sure that somebody died.” She wrinkles her nose and Fitz raises his eyebrows, sleepy though he is.

“You didn’t like that show, did you?”

Her voice suddenly shifts an octave higher. “No, it was alright,” she says, and then gives up at his expression. “Okay, it wasn’t really my thing. How could you tell?”

Fitz shrugs, and she’s not really sure why but she’s not too bothered by their proximity. Maybe it’s the sleep, maybe it’s because she’s acknowledged that this is how things are always going to be, but she doesn’t jerk away.

“I know how to read you,” he says like it’s obvious. “Also, you kept huffing at random intervals. I think you were driving Gran a bit mad.”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Jemma gasps, and she can feel herself flushing despite the cold. “I’ll have to apologise in the morning.”

“Nah, it’s okay. I think she was a bit too invested in Holly’s pet hamster anyway,” Fitz snorts, and then for absolutely no reason at all they’re giggling uncontrollably, trying to stifle their laughter so they don’t wake up Christine.

“I think,” Jemma says between huffs of dying laughter, “we need to go to bed.”

“Probably,’ Fitz agrees. “You can sleep with me, if you’d like.”

She raises her eyebrows at him and he immediately turns bright red.

“Not like that! I didn’t mean it like that! I just meant… um.. the spare room will be freezing, and I just.. erm..”

And, simply to put Fitz out of his misery, she rolls her eyes and hops to her feet, holding a hand out to him. “I'm having the fluffiest pillow.”

“Hey!” he whines as she pulls him to his feet and then drags him up the stairs. They trip over the tangle of blankets and giggle relentlessly until eventually they both sink into Fitz’s bed, where she proceeds to curl up and snuggle up to the blankets. Fitz hovers anxiously, but after a loud scoff she pats the spot beside her, and soon his body heat is warming up the spot under the blankets, and she sighs in bliss.

And right then, she’s almost asleep, when her hand brushes Fitz’s arm and he shrieks.

“You’re cold!”

“And you’re a wuss,” she says grumpily, but there’s no malice in her tone, and instead she wriggles closer into her half of the blanket, and just when she thinks Fitz has finally fallen asleep he exhales, in the way he does when he’s worried, and she can feel the waves of anxiety rolling off of him.

“Fitz? Are you alright?” she whispers, staring at the blue walls next to the bed.

“Yeah. I was just - thinking.”

“Well, you’re thinking very loudly, Fitz,” she teases. “Do you think you could tone it down a little bit?”

“Sorry.”

“I was _joking_ , Fitz.”

“Right, yeah, I knew that, totally knew that,” Fitz stutters, and on impulse more than anything else Jemma rolls over so that she is a whiskers breath away from him. It’s too dark to see anything but a dark shape, but she can feel his body heat. In that moment, in what is becoming a very common occurrence, Jemma desperately wants to kiss him then. Would it be so bad, really, if she just planted one on him and blamed it on lack of sleep?

Yes, it would, when you’ve only got ninety something hours left to live, and he’s got his whole, exciting, adventure of a life to go. Jemma Simmons is prone to selfishness (why do you think she dragged Fitz along to watch her die?), but this is one thing she will not take for herself, not if it means sacrificing his happiness.

So instead she pats around in the darkness until she stumbles upon his hand, and then she grips on for dear life.

“Jemma-”

“Please, Fitz,” she interrupts. “I need to do this.”

“No, Jemma, you’re stealing the blanket,” he whines, but the smile in his voice in unmistakeable.

“Fitz, you are _insufferable_.”

(But she doesn’t seem to think so when she wakes up in the morning tucked up to his side, legs intertwined and hands still clasped. And neither does he - although he does turn a rather alarming shade of red.)


	4. 'wish three' or alternatively, 'home'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner is quiet. It’s nothing like dinner with Fitz’s gran, all cosiness and chats and food in front of the telly. No, dinner with the Simmons’s is at the table, prim and proper, with placemats and wine glasses and candles. But that doesn’t make it any less homely. Adam Simmons laughs and makes lame jokes (to which Fitz greatly appreciates), Kathleen and Fitz strike up a teasing argument about Jemma’s love for homework, and everyone pretends not to see Lily sneaking scraps to the dog under the table. This feels like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Christmas Eve for me, and as my plans were interrupted, I thought I would get this out instead! So here you are, and happy holidays! <3

_ xx 91 hours _

 

When they wake up, the smell of breakfast is wafting through the bedroom door. She opens her eyes and is immediately met with two blue ones staring back, soft with an expression that is undefinable to her. 

For a moment she lies there, content to just smile lazily at him, but then there’s humming from the kitchen downstairs and she remembers herself, lurching away and out of bed. 

“What time is it?” she asks without looking at him, shivering at the cold floorboards and the lack of body heat -  _ Fitz’s  _ body heat. 

“Eight.”

Jemma blinks at him, half surprise, half amusement. “And you’re awake?”

He shrugs. Come to think of it, she can’t remember the last time she saw Fitz sleep in. He rolls his eyes at her and burrows under the blanket. “Gran washed your clothes. They’re on the dresser.”

She smiles at Christine’s thoughtfulness before a thought strikes her. “Did she, uh.. I mean, did she see us? Together?” she asks, wincing at her sudden inability to speak the English language.

It helps to see that he flushes a faint pink. “She didn’t say anything, if that helps.”

Jemma suddenly feels like falling on the bed and laughing in mortification. The boy whom she might be in love with’s grandmother walks in to find them wrapped up in each other, in the bed he spent his childhood sleeping in. Really, life can’t get any better than that.

Instead she smiles at Fitz and pulls the covers off. Oddly, he’s already fully-dressed. “Come on, Dr. Fitz. I smell bacon. Don’t tell me you’re not hungry. Go help your Gran, tell her I’ll be down in a minute.”

He grumbles all the way down the stairs, but she makes true to her promise, and as soon as she’s dressed and presentable, she slips downstairs to see Fitz and his Gran hugging. It’s such an intimate moment that she half thinks about turning away, but Christine spots her before she can and beckons her over. 

“Jemma, dear! You like scrambled eggs, don’t you?” 

So Jemma slides into the kitchen and tells her yes, yes she does, and then promptly dances around the kitchen with Christine to an array of Christmas music by Michael Buble, and when she whirls around Fitz is grinning at them from the doorway, arms crossed and eyebrows raised.

“Don’t pretend like you haven’t been dancing with me since you were five,” Christine shouts over her shoulder, and they laugh the morning away.

 

_ xx 89 hours _

 

It’s time to say goodbye, and Jemma still thinks this is the hardest part of this whole ordeal. Saying goodbye, when you don't know if you'll ever say hello again.

She smiles as Fitz and Christine tenderly hug farewell, and she glances about at this cosy little cottage in Scotland, with it’s cheery Christmas music and it’s crackling fireplace, and she thinks that it would be so easy just to spend the rest of her life here.

“Maybe we should stay,” she says as Christine envelops her into a hug. “You and Fitz make each other so happy.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Christine says immediately. “It may surprise you, coming from a feeble old lady such as myself, but I’m fine. It’s time for someone to make you happy, Jemma. I love you, you know that, but this isn’t where you need to be. You have family, friends, and they don’t live in Scotland.”

Jemma sees flashes of brown hair and wide smiles and amber eyes, and she grips Christine tighter. “Thank you,” she says, pouring as much emotion as she can possibly muster into those two words. Then, she lets go.

“There was a time where I believed my grandson was too smart for his own good,” says Christine with a smile. “I’m glad he found you.”

The words strike at something in her heart, but she grins anyway. “Technically, I was the one who found  _ him _ .”

“Not true,” interjects Fitz, but his eyes are wet. “I was the one who struck up conversation during neurobiology, remember?”

“Inaccurate,” she retorts happily. “You were the one who rebutted all form of communication in the first place! And if I recall correctly, that  _ amazing _ conversation consisted of you asking me to move out of the way so that you could see the lecturer properly.”

“Okay, but how is it my fault that your big head was blocking my view?”

“Oh, please, like _you_ can talk to me about that, honestly..”

They continue like this all the way out the door, through the airport and onto the plane, and Jemma wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

_ xx 88 hours _

 

“So, where to now, on this grand adventure of yours?” Fitz asks, grinning sideways at her. “China? Brazil? New Zealand?”

She smiles sheepishly at him. “I was thinking a little something like home?”

 

_ xx 78 hours _

 

Ten hours later and they touch down in familiar home territory. A cab takes them where they need to go, and it’s not long before Jemma and Fitz get out of the car, still holding hands, and a bundle of Simmons’s crash out from the house and barrel into their arms.

“Jemma, sweetheart, we worried so much,” her mother weeps into her hair.

“ _I_ didn’t, I know my little girl can take care of herself,” negates her father, a smile stretching the corners of his face, clearly trying to get on his little girl’s good side, because Jemma Simmons has always been a daddy’s girl.

There’s little Lily, seventeen and not teenagery enough to stop from clutching her sister like the world’s going to end, and repeating over and over again, “Jem, Jemma, I’m sorry for everything I ever did wrong, I’ll never steal your hairbrush again, please forgive me for using your toothbrush to squish a spider in the bathroom.”

Jemma closes her eyes and clings just as tightly back, and when she opens them again and everybody’s calmed down enough to back off, she holds her hand out shyly to Fitz. And without questioning it, he hops around the madly barking dog and grips on tight, and she chooses very decisively to ignore the way Lily’s eyes widen or Kathleen Simmons smiles or the way that Adam Simmons is totally oblivious.

 

_ xx 77 hours  _

 

Her room is just as she remembers, pale blue and neat, books spilling out of every flat surface. On the wall is a collage of photos from her old high school friends, reminders of the life Jemma had left behind when her family moved over to America. 

Alice, Lizzie, Alex, Jade, Jemma remembers them as blurry memories. Sweet, but with nothing of the vivid clarity that she sees her current friends in. 

“Jemma?” Lily peers in from the doorway, and Jemma nods and pats the bed invitingly. 

Lily sits down, but her eyes are fixed on Jemma’s arm. 

“This is it, then. No sciencing, no magical cures, no nothing.”

Jemma grins. “There’s no such thing as magic.”

Her sister looks inexplicably sad. “I wish there was.”

“Me too.” 

Lily stares curiously at her sister. “But science  _ is _ your magic.” 

“Science won’t extend my life,” she says gently. “Doesn’t mean I love it any less, though. It’s like.. like sweets. Sweets are high in sugar and fats and a  _ million _ other unhealthy things. But you still eat them, don’t you? Most of the time, people do things because it benefits themselves. Learn so you can get a job. Go to work to get money. Be nice to others in return for friendship. Give charities money so you can ease the guilt lodged in your gut. But sometimes, every once in awhile, we do things because we want to. Kiss someone special. Take up a hobby, like painting or swimming or science.” She smiles. “Hug a sister because you love them.”

Lily sits there for one long, unbroken moment, and then Jemma is being embraced in a firm hug.

“I love you,” Lily says fiercely. “You aren’t the perfect sister. Far from it, actually. You beat me in every test, you win all the academic awards, you use weird words that I can’t even begin to understand, and god, you have the  _ best  _ friends. I hate you so much, but I love you.”

“Contradictory,” Jemma says, and they laugh and laugh and laugh until their sides ache, just two sisters, breathing and laughing and living in a world where soon only one of them will be able to continue doing just that.

 

_ xx 76 hours _

 

“What do you think?” Jemma asks, grinning cheekily at Fitz from the doorway of the spare room. “Too girly?”

It’s not the first time Fitz has visited her family home, but it might be the last, so she wants to make a point on it. Also, Lily’s attacked the spare room since Jemma’s last visit, and there are fairy lights strung across the dresser, far too many pillows on the bed, and candles lit in every corner. It’d almost be romantic except for the fact that weak grey light filters through the windows and Fitz’s suitcase lies open on the bed. Instead, it feels cosy. It feels like coming home.

“Nah. Although I could do with one less pillow. How do they expect me to sleep?” He plucks a pillow up and drops it on the floor. She scoops it up with a roll of her eyes and shoves it into his chest. He falls back into the bed and is promptly drowned by said pillows.

“Be careful with Fluffy,” she warns. “He was my childhood pillow.”

Fitz frowns at her from over top the cushions. “You never told me about a childhood pillow.”

“That’s because I didn’t have one.” She smirks and he throws a pair of socks at her, to which she peels off with a look of disgust. “Ugh, Fitz, are these clean?”

“Relax, my Gran washed them.”

“Right. Of course your Gran washed your clothes for you.” 

“‘S not nice to judge, Simmons,” he says, and he pouts at her until she eventually caves and toes her shoes off to sink into the pillows with him.

“No it isn’t, Leo,” she returns pointedly, and she muffles his laugh by stuffing his socks in his face.

“It’s moments like these I’m going to miss,” Fitz says eventually, once they’ve calmed down and are staring at the ceiling. Her breath hitches and she pulls a pillow aside so she can see his expression properly.

“What do you mean?”

“When you’re gone.” His tone is solemn. “All these little moments.. like pillow fights or burning popcorn or you embarrassing me in front of that bloody agent who’s always popping in for routine checks.”

“Her name is Cameron, and the only reason she keeps popping in is because she likes you!” Jemma insists. 

She’s not sure why she’s so keen on pushing Fitz towards new opportunities, new friends, new romantic interests. Except a tiny part of her does know why. She wants Fitz to keep living, to keep loving, to look at somebody and make them feel as special as she does. But the funny thing is, it’s not an easy thing to do. Jemma likes to think she is very selfless. But a large, irrational, selfish part of her is screaming for her to cling onto Fitz and never let go, for her to keep him forever. 

(She needn’t worry, as she’ll discover later. She’s already got him.)

“Yeah, well, I don’t like her,” Fitz mumbles, and she twists on her side and nonchalantly tries to get a whiff of his aftershave. 

“Mmm, well, you don’t like anybody.”

“Not true. I like  _ you _ .” Her heart stalls and it’s like time has frozen. All she can think about is him, about how pretty his eyes are or how pasty he used to be or how grown up he’s become, and then he ruins the moment by stuttering and tacking words on hurriedly. “And Skye, and Bobbi and Mack and Hunter and May and Coulson and _ loads _ of people.”

“I get your point,” she tells him with a laugh, trying to discern whether it’s relief or crushing disappointment that wrecks havoc through her veins.

 

_ xx 75 hours _

 

The house is eerily quiet. The dog should be barking, or Lily should be complaining, or Kathleen Simmons should be talking to herself merrily as she cooks. Instead, there’s silence. Complete and utter silence.

Fitz has zonked out on the bed, clearly tired from all the travelling. She lets him sleep; he at least deserves that. Instead she slips off the bed and pads out into the hallway, and she’s got just the right timing to bump into her sister, who looks somewhat startled.

“You okay, Jemma?”

“I’m fine, Lils. Where’s mum and dad?”

Lily frowns. “Um.. dad’s outside, I think. Mum’s cooking dinner. Why? Where’s Fitz?”

“Sleeping,” Jemma says, and she can’t help the smile that spreads across her face.

Lily crosses her arms. “When are you going to tell me what’s going on between you and Fitz?”

“Fitz? What - I - What about him?” she asks, her voice high-pitched, and she practically runs down the stairs. Unfortunately, her sister persists. 

“I mean, the obvious tension between you two! Are you finally together?” Lily grins down at her from the stair banister, and Jemma tries to busy herself with setting the dinner table, even though she’s not even sure if dinner is being made. “Is he a good kisser?”

“No!” she says too quickly. “Um, I mean, yes. I mean - actually, I’m not sure.” Eventually she stills and forces a smile in her sister’s direction. “We’re not together. We’ve never been together, contrary to popular belief.”

Softly, “Why not?”

“Because.. well.. because I never saw it as a possibility,” Jemma says, and she’s realising the truth as it’s spilling out of her mouth. “Fitz never shows any interest in a girl. Ever. In the years I’ve been setting him up, not once has he had a girlfriend for more than a month.”

“Have you ever considered the possibility that it’s because he’s in love with you?”

Her heart lurches. “How do you figure that out, Lily? What’s the evidence?”

“Skinny love!” Lily blurts, and Jemma just stares at her. 

“Excuse you?”

“No, skinny love! When two people love each other, but are too shy to admit it, yet show it anyway,” she explains, and she smiles in a sad sort of satisfaction. “I never thought I’d see the day where I knew something you didn’t.”

“It’s not true,” she says numbly, but she’s calling up every encounter had with Fitz over the last week anyway.

“It’s truer than true!” Lily exclaims, clearly exasperated. “It’s as true as the way you never stop talking about him, it’s as true as the way he looks as you, it’s as true as the way you two were holding hands this afternoon. You spend every moment together! You have more inside jokes with him than with your own sister! You invited him to spend the last week of your  _ life _ together!” 

“Lily..”

“It’s true,” Lily says simply, and that’s what breaks her. 

“It can’t be true, Lily, please, let’s just-” 

“You have to tell him. You _need_ to tell him!” With a start, Jemma finds that Lily’s suddenly right beside her. “He’s going to be wondering for the rest of his life. You only have a few days left-”

“That’s why,” Jemma says before she can stop herself. Her voice is shaking. She feels sick, sick, sick to her stomach. It could be a side effect of dying but she knows it’s not. Nausea doesn’t kick in until approximately eight hours away from no time. 

Lily blinks, concerned. “Jemma?”

“That’s why I can’t tell him. Not because I’m afraid - although I am - but because I don’t have enough time in the world to love him. Confessions, kisses, _‘I love you’_ s’, none of that will matter once I’m gone. I’ll be fine but it will  _ hurt _ for him. So I can’t. He doesn't deserve that.” She pauses, takes a breath to recollect herself, and then gives Lily the biggest smile she can manage. 

There’s a long, tense, silence. Then, “Okay.”

“Wha -  _ Okay _ ?”

“Okay,” Lily repeats, and Jemma promptly steps forward and hugs her tightly. “I just want you to be happy, Jemma.”

“Thanks, Lily. You too.”

“Why do you have to go?” Lily whispers, so quietly that Jemma’s almost unsure if she imagined it or not.

Instead of debating it, she just says, “Some stories just end. I’m very happy with how mine turned out.”

 

_ xx 74 hours _

 

When she’s cried it out with Lily, recollected herself and wiped the tears from her eyes, she trods into the kitchen. Her mother is already there, busying herself over a chopping board with shaking hands. Jemma knows where she got her habit of biting back tears from.

“Do you want some help?”

Kathleen Simmons jumps about a mile high, and then she smiles - somewhat sadly - at Jemma. “That would be great, dear. Could you cut the potatoes for me?”

“Of course,” she replies lightly, and the next few moments are filled with the sounds of sizzling and chopping, commonplace kitchen sounds that just seem to make the room quieter. “Mum. Are you okay?”

Jemma can’t see Kathleen’s face, but her voice shakes, and that’s indicator enough. “My eldest daughter is running out of time. Other than that, I’m just fine.”

There’s a dry laugh and Jemma turns around to see Kathleen staring at her, tea towel in hand and tears in her eyes.

“Mum?”

“You do know, don’t you?” Kathleen asks tremulously. “That I love you?”

“Mum - what? Of course I know!” Jemma replies, startled. “I love you too.”

Kathleen wrings the towel in her hands. “I just.. I just thought.. well, when you were a teenager, we always used to fight. About the silliest things, even. And I wasn’t sure..”

“Of course I love you,” Jemma says, and she’s surprised to hear that her voice is calm. “It’s like you said. We fought about the most insignificant things. I don’t even remember what we fought about. I remember you kissing my forehead before bed every night, I remember you buying me that plastic microscope for my fifth Christmas, I remember you putting up with all the bugs and samples I used to wreck through the house. I even remember that ridiculous party you spent three weeks planning for my sixteenth birthday.”

They both chuckle, and Kathleen smiles. “You didn’t even want a party in the end. Just wanted to stay home and work on your homework.”

“You’d better not share that story at my..”  _ Funeral _ . She’d been about to say funeral. “Anyway, Skye and Hunter would never forget it.”

“No promises.”

“Of course not,” Jemma laughs. “The point is, I don’t hate you. There was a period.. do you remember when I was seventeen and we had that argument about joining the Academy?”

“You didn’t speak to me for weeks. And you went anyway.”

“Yes, well..” She swallows. “I- I thought I hated you. Maybe I did. But the most important thing is, I’m not going to die hating you.”

Wordlessly, Kathleen steps forward. They hug, for how long she doesn’t know, standing there in the kitchen with her mother smoothing back her hair. Finally, Jemma peers over her shoulder.

“Mum? Not that I’m not enjoying the hugging, but I think you should check on the roast.”

Kathleen smiles. “Right. Of course.

 

_ xx 72 hours _

 

Dinner is quiet. It’s nothing like dinner with Fitz’s gran, all cosiness and chats and food in front of the telly. No, dinner with the Simmons’s is at the table, prim and proper, with placemats and wine glasses and candles. But that doesn’t make it any less homely. Adam Simmons laughs and makes lame jokes (to which Fitz greatly appreciates), Kathleen and Fitz strike up a teasing argument about Jemma’s love for homework, and everyone pretends not to see Lily sneaking scraps to the dog under the table. This feels like  _ home _ . 

And when Lily brings in the Christmas pudding, all ablaze with candles like it’s Jemma’s birthday, she can’t help but smile wide.

“Thank you,” Jemma laughs. “But I hate Christmas pudding.”

“We know,” interrupts Adam, being slapped away from the dessert by his wife, “But I  _ love  _ Christmas pudding.”

There’s a chorus of groans and grins around the table, and then Kathleen hands her the knife. “Blow out the candles, Jemma.”

“Don’t forget to make a wish!” chirps Lily.

Jemma rolls her eyes and blinks at the flames for a second. Then she glances up at the family gathered around the table - dear old dad and worrisome little mum, wide-eyed sister and faithful best friend. “Don’t need to,” she decides after some deliberation. “I’ve already got everything I want.”

She blows out the candles.

 

_ xx 71 hours and 49 minutes _

 

“We should play a game,” Lily suggests. Jemma, Lily and their father are sprawled in the living room, full to the brim and listening to the light chatter of Fitz and Kathleen washing up in the kitchen.

“I haven’t heard you say that since you were ten,” marvels Adam.

Lily gives him a dry look. “You haven’t heard me call on you to kiss my boo-boos since I was ten either. Don’t worry, that’s not happening any time soon.”

Jemma laughs and rolls onto her stomach, head propped in her hands. “I think that’s a lovely idea. The board games part, not the boo-boo part. Although I seem to recall that _ I  _ was the one fixing your sores, not Dad.”

“That’s why you’re my favourite sister.”

“I’m your only sister.”

“Oh, yes. That might explain it.”

“ _ Children _ ,” Adam sighs, even though they all know he’s the only child in the room. “Jenga it is, then.”

“ _ Jenga?! _ ” Jemma and Lily exclaim.

“Alright now, don’t look so aghast,” Adam laughs, throwing his hands up in surrender. “What do you want to play?”

“Charades, duh.”

“Monopoly, obviously.”

Adam places a hand to his chin. “Hmm.. it seems we have a battle of wills here. Seeing as he’s our guest..  _ Fitz! _ ”

Jemma has to smother a smile as Fitz pokes his head around the corner, clearly worried. “Yeah? Is everything okay? Is Jemma’s timer..”

She promptly ignores Lily’s pointed looks as Adam grins. “No, my dear daughter is fine, judging by the glares she is currently giving her sister. We were wondering whether you would prefer charades or monopoly?”

She’s trying to communicate _monopoly, monopoly, monopoly_ through to him with her eyes. He must get it, because he always gets it, and yet she still has to resist the urge to throw a pillow at him when he says, “Why not both?”

“Ah, Leopold Fitz, the eternal peacemaker. Both it is. I’ll get them from the attic.”

“I should get back to washing the dishes,” Fitz explains, and Jemma jumps to her feet all too quickly.

“I’ll help!” She pulls Fitz out of the room before she can get anymore funny looks from her family, before whirling with mock anger. “Why didn’t you say monopoly! You know I’m terrible at charades.”

“Maybe that’s why I chose it,” teases Fitz, and then his features become serious. Although perhaps serious wouldn’t be the right way to describe it. More like… nervous. Sad. “Also.. I want to be on good terms with your family. I don’t want things after to be.. um.. I just don’t.”

Her smiles crumples; she can feel it folding in on herself. Right. Of course. Things always come back to the timer on her wrist. Fitz must see she’s upset because he starts immediately.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s fine, Fitz,” she tells him, and it’s true. “I’m being honest. It’s fine. This is harder for you then it is for me. I get it. It’s just.. for a moment there, I almost forgot. I had this.. this great vision of playing board games with my parents and my sister, and children..”

His stare is suddenly soft. “Children?”

“Um - Lily’s kids,” she says quickly. “I’ve always wanted to be an aunt.”

“Right. Yeah.”

It’s silent, even awkward for a while, and then Jemma finally gets the chance to get a good look at him. And it’s upsetting, his features are paler than usual, and there are faint purple bags under his eyes. She reaches a hand up to his cheek almost instinctively. 

“Have you been getting enough sleep? You’re showing sure signs of sleep deprivation-”

“I’m fine, Jemma-”

“-did that nap do you any good?”

“Nap?” His expression goes cloudy, and then clarity comes to him quickly. “Oh, that, I mean, it was-”

“Games are set up!” comes Lily’s shout, and Fitz takes his excuse to smile and tug her back into the living room. 

But Jemma Simmons is not fooled. There is no doubt in her mind that Fitz is lying. The only question is, why?

 

_ xx 71 hours _

 

Jemma’s worries are somewhat forgotten in the next few hours, swept away by laughter and familiarity and family. She curls up on the couch with Fitz, personal space long forgotten, and Adam appears with hot drinks and snacks for all. Everybody is surprisingly good at charades except for Jemma and her dad, and Lily and Fitz seem to make it their mission to muck her up as much as they possibly can, innocently guessing the completely wrong action and scheming behind steaming mugs of hot chocolate. 

Jemma just rolls her eyes and clutches her cup of tea and is eternally grateful for this weird family that she was raised up in. However, that doesn’t stop her complaints and _ ‘ugh, Fitz! _ ’s and incessant moans, and it most certainly doesn’t stop her from getting her revenge in monopoly. 

There’s wars over who’s being the bank, over who gets the dog playing piece (Fitz claims that it’s the closest thing to a monkey; Lily says that she’s the one who’s  _ got  _ an actual dog), and everybody pinches each other’s money when the victim isn’t looking. Jemma is prim and proper about the whole thing, organising her money into neat piles and selections while the rest scatter their money haphazardly around the board. Jemma tries to fix Fitz’s, but after the third time of spilling them onto the floor she gives up and spends the remainder of the game huffing at him for stealing the last property of the set she’d been hankering after.

When it’s nearing the middle of the night and Fitz and Jemma are the only ones left in the game, things start to get a little silly. No one even flinches (except, maybe, for Fitz) when Jemma throws her hands in the air and asks if they want this to be her last memory of them, and eventually it’s Kathleen who puts her foot down and tells them all to go to bed.

The family begin to disperse, and Jemma leads Fitz up to the spare room without question. They’ve shared the bed a million times before, they don’t have enough time to do it a million times more; why waste the little time she has shyly skirting around it?

“I think we both know who the  _ real _ winner was,” Jemma’s bragging as they take the stairs one drowsy step at a time, hands linked and half delirious with lack of sleep. 

“I clearly had more money,” Fitz retorts, words muffled through a yawn. “Bloody hell, why are there so many stairs?”

“Actually, if we take into account the properties we both had in possession, I think you’ll find that mine were worth more in value, therefore proving that  _ I  _ won. As or the stairs, it’s a two-story house, Fitz. What did you expect - an elevator? Someone to carry you?”

“Carrying me would be nice,” he mumbles sleepily. “But I had more properties than you.”

“Only two more, and they were the brown cards! Everybody knows that they’re the lowest in value! Whereas I had the deep blue cards, which accounts for more, which means I won! Honestly, it’s _ basic _ monopoly knowledge,” she scoffs.

“Yeah, well, Lily gave you all the good cards when she bankrupted.”

“Call it the perks of-”  _ dying _ “-being a good sister!”

They finally reach the door of the spare room, and as they stand in front of it, Jemma is ridiculously reminded of two teenagers after their first date. 

Fitz blinks at her, trying to lean on the doorway and instead slipping. She tries to muffle her laughter and succeeds at an eyebrow raise instead, until he finally manages, “Are you - I mean - are you coming in? I mean, not that I’m asking you to - not that I’m _not_ asking you to either, but -”

“Yes, Fitz. I’m coming in,” she tells him with a smile. “But later. I have something I want to do first.”

Without quite thinking about it, she steps forward and presses a gentle kiss to his cheek. And then she promptly whirls around and starts briskly back down the stairs, elation and horror mixing a sickening cocktail in her stomach. She can’t help but think back to her conversation with Lily earlier, and all the reasons she shouldn’t love Leo Fitz, and wondering what on Earth had possessed her to do that.

 

_ xx 67 hours _

 

The night air is cool, and the grass is dewy wet, but Jemma traipses across the grounds in bare feet and old pyjamas anyway. As expected, there’s a familiar figure out on the grass, his eye pressed up to a telescope, a thermos flask of hot chocolate by his side, and open books sprawled on top of an old blanket.

“Thought I’d find you here,” she says, and Adam turns to her with smile.

“How?”

Jemma shrugs, settling onto the blanket next to him and hugging her knees to her chest. “This is your thinking spot. You always come here when you’re worried, or stressed.”

“You must get that from me, then.” She glances up as he places a blanket around her shoulders. “Are you scared?”

“Scared is a drastic understatement,” she scoffs, but her heart isn’t really in it. Instead, she draws the blanket closer and turns her head to the swirling stars up above. “Isn’t it odd? There are billions of people in this world. Few of them are geniuses. Even fewer are child prodigies. And even fewer have malfunctioning timers. And yet, somehow, here I am.”

Adam chuckles. “Your mum would say it was fate.”

“Yes. But we don’t believe in fate.”

“No,” admits her father, and then they’re quiet. Adam moves aside and they take turns peering through the telescope, marking down the stars they see.

“I messed up,” Jemma says after a long while. 

Adam doesn’t even blink. “How so?”

“I.. I’ve done something I promised I would never do.”

He glances at her from the side of the telescope. “Did you promise this to someone, or to yourself?”

Jemma has to take a moment to consider this. “To myself. Or maybe to someone else, I’m not sure. I’m doing this to protect someone.”

Adam fixes her with another look, reaches over, pours some hot chocolate into the lid and hands it to her. She clutches it in her hands and she knows that he knows exactly who she’s talking about. 

“He can handle whatever you need to tell him, Jemma,” he says calmly.

“I’m afraid he’ll handle it too well,” she tells him, feeling oddly choked up. She sips at her drink to mask it, and receives and burned tongue for her troubles. “He’ll bottle it up and smile and laugh, and then when I’m gone, he’ll.. I’m afraid he’ll break. I don’t want him to break. No one should break on someone else’s accord. Fitz should never break.”

Adam gives her a small smile. “He’s tougher than you think, Jemma. There’ll be no breaking involved. Or at least, no breakage beyond repair.”

“I don’t want him to be hung up on me,” she whispers. “We’ve spent so long together now. I don’t want him to be thinking about the what-if’s his entire life. If I round this off neatly, if I.. It’s too late to start anything new.”

“As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing new about it,” Adam says, raising an eyebrow, and suddenly Jemma thinks that her father might not have been so oblivious to the hand-holding after all. “No matter how neat you tie things up, there’s always going to be some residue left over. It’s not science, but some things aren’t.”

Again, companionable silence, and then Jemma’s voice, quiet and shaky. “I know that as far as we know, there’s no emotional or mental capability after death. But I’m going to miss you.”

“I’m going to miss you too, Jemma.”

She smiles tearfully at her dad. “Are you going to hug me? Because I’ve been doing a lot of hugging today.”

“Do you think you have enough energy for one more?”

“I think I can manage just  _ one. _ ”

(She doesn’t want to let go.)

 

_ xx 66 hours _

 

When she slips back into the spare room, Fitz is curled up, asleep. His laptop lies abandoned in front of him, and drool slips onto the pillow. She stifles a laugh and stows the laptop away, before crawling in and sliding under the blankets next to him. She’s intending to go straight to sleep, but Fitz blinks awake blearily as she gets in.

“Jemma?”

“Mhmm. Go back to sleep, Fitz.”

“I’ve been thinking,” he mumbles, so drowsy she can barely make him out. 

She smiles at him, her father’s words spinning circles in her head. “Yes?”

“Even with the combined price of all your properties, I still had more money than you. Which means that I’m the true winner of monopoly.”

Jemma rolls her eyes and snuggles deeper into the blanket. “Okay, Fitz. You win.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- as a side note, the star-gazing was not only inspired by Jemma's scoliosis story as a kid, but also by Donna Noble and her gorgeous granddad.


	5. 'wish four' or alternatively, 'love'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winnie the Pooh said, it’s the smallest things that takes up the most room in your heart. Right now, for Jemma Simmons, this is undoubtedly true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it conceited of me to say that this is my favourite chapter? It's long but I couldn't find a good place to cut it, so here you are! (also, I am very proud of myself for uploading when I said I would. I think this is improvement for me).

_ xx 60 hours _

 

Jemma purposely takes a long time in the shower that morning. It’s not that she’s  _ avoiding _ Fitz, not really. She just doesn’t want to see the look in his eyes and pair it with the words everybody keeps telling her, doesn’t want to think about her lips against his every time they share personal space. 

Okay, so perhaps she is avoiding him.  _ But not for forever, _ she promises herself. Just for these precious minutes. Just these precious minutes, and then she’ll go back out there and be intelligent, pretty Simmons, with her positive smile and her unrestrained opinions and her undying optimism about everything - even dying.

She runs water into her hair and wonders if this will be the last time she ever does this. The last time she stands in her family bathroom, pulling soap suds carefully through her hair. It seems silly, that she’s pouring so much attention into washing her hair, but as the timer on her wrist counts continuously down, she can’t help but wonder if every little thing she does will be her last. Hug her sister, drink hot chocolate, share an inside joke with her dad. 

Winnie the Pooh said, it’s the smallest things that takes up the most room in your heart. Right now, for Jemma Simmons, this is undoubtedly true.

 

_ xx 59 hours _

 

“You can’t stay?” Lily asks, somewhat desperately.

They’re gathered outside of the house. All is somewhat solemn, and as Jemma hugs each of her family members and even kisses the dog on the nose, she can’t help but think  _ this is the last time I will ever see you, or you, or you _ .

But she puts on a brave face and smiles at her sister. “‘Course not, Lils. You know me. Places to go, things to do. It’s very important.”

“What can be more important than your blood family?” asks Kathleen Simmons. Her words come out rather mean, but Jemma knows that behind the hastily-applied makeup there is only fear and anguish.

There’s a simple answer to that difficult question. “My adopted family.”

“You take care of Jemma, alright?” Adam tells Fitz, who shrugs and smiles sheepishly. 

“I think she takes care of me.”

Jemma nudges his shoulder. “You are absolutely right. What will you do without me?”

Before she can see what that question provokes, there’s a flurry of arms and another round of goodbyes, and she’s left wondering exactly what Fitz would have had to say. 

During her embrace with her mother, she catches Lily and Fitz hugging and talking in quiet voices out of the corner of her eye. If Lily weren’t quite so young, and if Jemma weren’t quite so jealous, she thinks that they might have made a nice future together. But this isn’t some made up fantasy, and the clock doesn’t wait for daydreams, so after a few more minutes she reluctantly tears herself away from her family. 

“Goodbye,” she manages, and it sounds like forever.

 

_ xx 57 hours _

 

Maybe she should have expected it by now, but she’s still utterly surprised when a whole rush of people tumble out of the house to greet her. It’s been happening a lot recently, and yet she still can’t suppress the huge swell of emotions that come with the team chattering cheerfully around her. 

“Jemma,” Skye cheers through a whirled hug, as the rest of the team gather around her - leaned up on the car, perched on the edge of the pavement, hopping around in the wet grass, these ridiculous, silly people are her _ family _ . She picked them, and in turn they picked her too.

“Did you two have fun?” Bobbi asks kindly, and beside her, Jemma knows Fitz is smiling too. 

“You’d be so jealous if you knew,” Fitz says teasingly, and she could very happily sit there and listen to everyone talking for the rest of her days, but then Trip grins at her and she knows the game is up.

“Come on, girl, I know you’ve got something hidden up that sleeve of yours. You didn’t call us all here just to hear Fitz talk about monkeys.” 

“Oi!”

“Yeah, Seventeen,” Hunter agrees, obviously pleased to be the one ignoring someone else for a change. “You interrupted me from my beauty sleep. If it weren’t for you I could still be shaping up this face. It’s hard to keep a handsome man like me in check, you know.”

There’s groans all around, but everyone knows that there’s not a thing they mind giving up to help Jemma Simmons.

“Okay,” she admits. “I’ve planned a little something.”

 

_ xx 56 hours _

 

Which is precisely how they end up all piled up in Mack’s blue van, pulling in at the nearest amusement park, silly grins on everyone’s faces and Skye, Trip and Hunter bouncing excitedly in the back, whooping along to some nondescript song on the radio. Jemma’s disappointed that May and Coulson can’t make it, but somehow she doesn’t think the amusement park is really their scene anyway.

Skye, Triplett and Hunter wrestle to be the first out the door, while Bobbi and Mack slide out of the shotgun and driver's seat respectively, and they’re all immediately bickering. Beside her, Fitz groans and slumps down in his seat.

“ _ This _ is how you want to spend your second-to-last day?” 

She smiles at him, nudging his shoulder lightly. “Obviously. Come on, I know you’re craving popcorn.”

He grins as he follows her, both hopping out of the van as Mack slams the door behind them. “You know me so well.”

“No, I just know you’re always hungry,” she corrects, pulling him along to catch up with the others.

 

_ xx 55 hours and 48 minutes _

 

Once they’ve purchased their tickets, the group stroll absent-mindedly through the amusement park. It’s one of those picture perfect days where the sky is blue and there are barely any clouds and Jemma has to shrug off her jacket before the heat consumes her.

It’s safe to say that the team transforms into a bunch of kids again. Or maybe they were always kids. She’s not sure. 

“Oh my god, there have stall games here!” Skye says excitedly somewhere down the line. “Trip, come on, let’s go and win something.”

Trip laughs and soon they’re queued up at a stall. Hunter smirks at Bobbi and Jemma and Fitz have to avoid looking at each other so they don’t burst out laughing.

“Want me to win you something, Bobs?”

Bobbi crosses her arms and rolls her eyes. “If I want something won, I’ll ask Mack to do it.” 

Hunter splutters, and Bobbi kisses him on the cheek before gesturing to Mack. “Let’s catch up with Skye and Trip. Bet we can kick their ass.”

Fitz suddenly glances up in alarm. “Hey - you can’t leave Hunter with us!”

“Oi,  _ mate _ . No need to sound so pleased about me.”

Bobbi smiles sympathetically at Jemma. “Sorry. We’ll pick him up in fifteen minutes.”

Jemma smiles and waves. “Have fun!” Beside her, Fitz is still grumbling about being stuck with Hunter, and she rolls her eyes and loops an arm through both men’s.

“Fitz, he’s not so bad. Hunter, stop spluttering. Come on, let’s apply science to these games and show up everybody else,” she says cheerily. 

“But Hunter-”

“But Fitz-”

She huffs. It’s going to be a long day.

 

_ xx 55 hours and 30 minutes _

 

Turns out it’s not so bad after all. After breaking up an argument between Fitz, Hunter and a five year old girl, they actually have _ fun _ . Jemma and Fitz apply the simple laws of physics to win the games, and Hunter is weirdly talented at fishing rubber ducks out of a barrel, so eventually they end up with several prizes.

When Hunter wins a giant (frankly, terrifying) stuffed animal, she forces him and Fitz to go and give it to the little girl whom they’d argued with. When they valiantly refuse (something about their dignity), she marches right up to that five year old, hands her the toy, and tells her to stay away from incessant prats and all boys.

“Nice job, Seventeen,” Hunter remarks upon her return, looking thoroughly impressed. 

“Always the tone of surprise,” she retorts, preening, and pats a sulking Fitz consolingly on the arm. “We don’t have room for toys in SHIELD, Fitz.”

“I was going to call it Henry.”

She sighs. “Of course you were.”

“Who’s the pain to look after now?” Hunter pipes in triumphantly.

Simultaneously, “Still you.”

 

_ xx 55 hours _

 

At some point the others find them, and Jemma agrees to go and pick a ride with Bobbi and Skye, who insist a Girl’s Only Hour is absolutely necessary. She can tell Fitz is a bit hesitant about leaving her but smiles and assures him she’ll be fine and then they’re off, just those three women in a themepark.

“So, you and Hunter,” Jemma prompts, and she and Skye share a grin as Bobbi walks ahead.

“Same old, same old,” says Bobbi, waving it off. She smiles knowingly at the two of them. “How about Trip? Or Fitz?”

“No,” they both say immediately, and Jemma tacks on for good measure, “The success rates of that are highly improbable.”

Skye groans and Bobbi laughs, and Jemma lets herself feel blissfully happy as they stroll aimlessly, stealing popcorn from Skye’s (almost empty) bag. Bobbi spiels off into some hilarious field story about Mack and Hunter, and she’s almost disappointed when Skye points at a roller coaster that looks positively terrifying and exhilarating all in one breath.

“That one!” she announces. Bobbi shrugs but Jemma frowns at it doubtfully.

“I don’t know if I can survive that one.”

“ _ Please _ . You’re Jemma Simmons, you can survive anything,” Skye pleads, and none of them mention the one thing that Jemma can’t survive.

“Alright,” she concedes. “But you’re paying. And you’ve both got to hold my hand when I ask for it.”

So it’s a deal, and Jemma thinks she might even be starting to get excited for it when they spy the queue. The long, never ending queue of excited families and bickering couples. The one they’ll never get to the end of if they want to experience the rest of the themepark.

“Oops, looks like we’re going to have to return to the boys,” Jemma says cheerfully, but Skye grabs her arm before she can leave, the beginnings of a mischievous grin curling up her features. 

“Oh no,” Jemma worries, just as Skye asks, “Are you ready for some bad girl shenanigans?”

Jemma looks to Bobbi for help. “No? Please tell me that your plan is just for us to gorge on unhealthy amounts of candyfloss.”

Bobbi smirks. It’s a scary look on her. “We’re three attractive women with the ability to flirt. The guy running the thing looks like he’s barely twenty, probably hasn’t had so many women coming onto him in his life. We can get in  _ easy. _ ”

She gasps. “Barbara Morse, are you suggesting that we seduce that poor man all for the cause of bypassing a queue? In an  _ amusement park _ ?”

Skye tugs her along by the arm and they ignore the glares of the hot and bothered people still waiting in line. Jemma’s running out of time - she’s got a valid reason, right?

“You better pray that I survive this roller coaster,” she mutters to Skye as Bobbi taps the poor victim on the shoulder and flashes her prettiest smile.

(spoiler alert; she does)

 

_ xx 54 hours _

 

Somewhere along the line, once they’ve returned to the group, everyone stops for junk food except for Trip and Jemma, who both wrinkle their noses at the obscene amount of grease overlaying everything. 

Trip grabs her by the arm, claiming that they’re going to find something healthy to eat, and Jemma pretends not to feel Fitz’s gaze burning into her back as she wanders off, laughing, with Triplett.

“I really don’t think we’re going to find anything sugar-free in an amusement park,” Jemma remarks, but miraculously they stumble across a healthy juice stall, arguing over whether strawberry or raspberry tastes better (conclusion; they’re both more or less the same). He makes her laugh all the way to a picnic table, where they sit and drink their juices and wait for the others to catch up, and in another world, in another universe, Jemma thinks she could have been very happy with Triplett.

Things are easy. They chat about anything and everything except the things that matter, like where Triplett got his socks or how Jemma and Fitz once tried to prank Skye, or how they think it might rain tomorrow. 

“What will you miss most about me?” Jemma wonders out loud, once there’s a lull in the conversation. Trip blinks at her, but he doesn’t seem all too surprised.

“Your brain,” he grins, and she beams. “What will you miss most about me?”

Jemma considers this for a long moment. “Your smile. What won’t you miss about me?”

“Nothing.”

She gives him a pointed look through her smile. “Stop being so charming, Triplett. I want the honest truth.”

He pauses for a minute. “Okay. Um.. it’s cute when you get excited about something, but after the first hour I kind of, sort of, maybe, want to claw my ears out. Just saying.”

She frowns at him. “I happen to be passionate about science!”

“I know, I know!”

“It’s normal to ramble when you’re excited about something!”

“Yes, Jemma, I know, trust me.  _ You’re _ the one who asked me this question.”

“I suppose,” she concedes. “Alright, well.. I don’t like the way you and Skye always look at me like you know something I don’t.”

He laughs. “That’s because we  _ do  _ know something you don’t.”

She gapes at him. “I have two PhD’s!”

“Yeah, in science,” he counters. “Not in life. Or love, for that matter.”

Before she can press him any further on the matter, a barrel of team mates roll up, forcing ice creams into their hands despite all protests.

 

_ xx 53 hours _

 

“Let’s do a team ride,” Skye suggests, wriggling out of Trip’s grasp to pinch a chip from Mack. 

Hunter glances at her sleptically. “You see any rides here that fit,” he pauses to count,  “seven people?”

“The fact that you had to stop and count all of us was worrying,” Bobbi says, patting his shoulder. 

“What about the Ferris wheel?” Mack suggests. “They can fit up to eight people. I count as two people, and FitzSimmons are practically one person-”

“Hey!”

“-so it should work out nicely.”

Trip grins. “I like that idea.”

Fitz nudges her. “Are you up for that?” 

Suddenly Jemma realises that all eyes are on her. They’re waiting for  _ her _ approval. Unexpectedly touched, she smiles. “That sounds like a lovely idea.”

 

_ xx 52 hours _

 

They’ve finally made it past the queue and onto the carriage, and the sight is breathtaking. Not just because of the view (although that’s beautiful in it’s own right), but because she’s suspended in the air with some of the people that she cares most about in the world, and she doesn’t think it can get any better than this.

She waits until they’ve reached the very top, and then she smiles, and she says, “I love you guys, do you know?”

(they do.)

 

_ xx 51 hours _

 

“So. You and Lily.” 

It’s the first thought that springs into her head. They’re splayed out on the grass of the outskirts of the fairground, candyfloss in their teeth and the sun casting its soft orange glow on them. His hair looks luminous in the hues. She wants to tuck a stray curl away, but she’s decided against intimacies like that, so instead she contents herself to just watching him.

He glances at her in obvious surprise. “Your sister?”

She rolls her eyes. “No, those white flowers that you adore. Yes, my sister!”

“Alright,  _ alright _ , no need to be so harsh. What about her?”

Something about the grass suddenly seems appealing, and she picks tufts of it out, watching as the breeze picks them out of her palm and carries them away. “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“What is, Jemma?” Oh, he’s getting impatient now. Grumpy Fitz is a nuisance, but he’s one of her favourite Fitz’s. There’s a possessive part of her that likes knowing she is one of the few people in the world who can calm him down - and alternatively, rile him up.

“You two..” The words are lodged firmly in her throat. She feels as if she might suffocate in them. “You’re very close.”

“‘Course we are,” Fitz laughs, and she can feel the relief emanating off him. It’s times like these she hates his complete and utter obliviousness. “She’s my best friend’s sister.”

“No, I meant.. I meant.. Closer than that.” He stares quizzically at her, but now that that is out she can’t stop herself, the words spilling over each other as they escape her mouth as quickly as she can manage. “I understand that you might make each other happy and I am perfectly okay with that, but please be careful. Don’t hurt my sister, Fitz. And don’t let her hurt you either.”

There’s a long, unbroken moment, and then Fitz speaks. The intensity, the raw emotion in his voice makes her flinch, and she’s afraid of what she’ll find if she looks into his eyes.

“You- You think that Lily and I..”

“Well, I.. You two seem very close, that’s all. I don’t begrudge you that. Lily is amazing, and I love her, and there’s no one else that I would rather you end up with,” she says quickly, taking deep breaths every moment she can squeeze them in. “I just.. I don’t want you to feel obligated to me because I’m dying. You know how I feel about special treatment, Fitz. Dying doesn’t change any of that. If you want to go ahead with Lily, you should. You definitely should. Before.. before it’s too late.”

_ Like it is with us _ , she wants to say, but she doesn’t. Jemma Simmons, who makes her opinions known around the world, keeps her mouth shut.

“You can’t be serious, Jemma.” Those five words finally make her look up, and she finds that Fitz is up on his feet, his expression tight with something that might resemble anger, and she can’t for the life of her imagine why (except she totally can).

“You think I’m kidding?” she retorts, a lick of flame coiling in her stomach. She’s been angry for days and she just hasn’t seen it. Angry at herself, for being cowardly, angry at Fitz, for being selfless, angry at the world for taking her time away from her.

“You’ve  _ got  _ to be kidding,” Fitz scoffs, and the resentment in his tone shoots a bolt of hurt down her spine. “I can’t believe that.. you.. I thought you _ knew _ , Jemma.”

She lurches to her own feet, giving him a sharp look and wondering how their light-hearted conversation could have turned into this. “I know everybody says we can read each other’s minds, but I need you to tell me what you’re thinking for once, Leo!”

Fitz rolls his eyes at the use of his full name, clearly annoyed. “I’ve told you not to call me that.”

“You’ve told me a lot of things that I ignore,” she returns stonily. Then, she softens. “Thought I knew what, Fitz?”

He doesn’t seem capable of speaking. His mouth opens and closes, his hands resting on his waist, his leg jumping up and down. And then it all explodes out, in one overwhelming rush.

“How I feel about you.”

Her heart stops. She thinks that time might have slowed down. Every second feels longer than the last, her mouth slightly ajar, the tears threatening to spill if she doesn’t guard them fiercely. She knows. She’s always known, she thinks. There is a part of Jemma Simmons that has always thought she was destined to end up with Leopold Fitz. It was only a matter of time.

And yet, that’s the cruel irony of it all, isn’t it? She doesn’t  _ have _ time. The matter of time now has no matter, because she has no time. She might laugh if she weren’t so physically, emotionally crushed. And because she doesn’t think she can ever laugh when Fitz looks like that -  _ broken _ . She knew this would happen. She’s broken him. She’s broken  _ them _ .

“Fitz.. I..” she tries, but her voice is thick and she can’t get the words out. Tears are clotting her vision but she refuses to let them fall.

“Yeah, right, of course,” he mutters scathingly, beating himself up because that’s just what he does. “I should’ve known.” 

“Don’t blame yourself for this,” she says fiercely, and when he glances back at her his eyes are swirling with an emotion that tears a rift through her heart. He looks vulnerable and it  _ hurts _ . She’s done this, it’s all her fault, she has done what she promised herself she would never do.

“I thought.. there were times where I thought you felt the same way about us. About.. me. The hand-holding, falling asleep in bed, all those times where I thought I actually had a chance…” He throws his hands in the air. “I heard you talking to my gran, Jemma! Back in Scotland. All those things you’ve said and done, and now.. I don’t know what else to think but that you might have been leading me on.”

“I would  _ never _ .”

He fixes her with a look that makes her want to wilt. “That what was it, Jemma? Tell me what is was. Because I thought we were more than just best friends.”

“We are!” Jemma blurts, and she almost feels like stomping her foot in frustration. Fitz looks utterly surprised, oddly hopeful, and crushingly despairing all in one gaze, and she has to take a deep breath before she can continue. “But we aren’t..  _ that _ . We can’t be that. Don’t you see? We can’t ever be that. My timer doesn’t allow for it. It doesn’t and it never will, so you need to accept that, okay? You,” her voice cracks, “You need to accept that I’m going to die, and then you’re going to move on with your life.”

“Jemma..” Fitz says, and he doesn’t sound angry any more. Just sad. “I love you.”

She has to squeeze her eyes shut. “I know you do. But I- I can’t, okay? Not now, not ever. So I think you should get away from me. Or stay here, I don’t know. I’ll go to that little cottage we always talked about, and then I’ll make my peace, and you’ll go home and you’ll move on with your life. It’s for the best.” 

She chokes back a sob and turns to leave, but before she can there’s a firm hand gripping her wrist.

“I don’t care,” he says, and the words are so determined she believes him.

“Fitz, let go of me.”

“No, Jemma, you don’t get it! I don’t care! About your timer, about how much time you’ve got left, not even whether you love me or not,” he says desperately, and he’s clinging to her like she’s a lifeline, even though she feels like she’s the one drowning. “Just don’t leave, please. I don’t care about any of it.”

“But I do, Fitz!” she manages, the hysteria creeping into her voice. “Please, I  _ do _ . I care, a lot. More than you know. Let me go.”

“I won’t.”

“You will,” she says gently, and they both know that it’s true. He has never been able to resist her requests. This time will be no different, because this is who they are. This is who they will always be. Because she’s selfish, she raises her free hand to tuck away that curl. “Leopold Fitz. In a sea full of anomalies, you are the greatest. I could hardly believe it when we became such good friends. Really, the odds are astronomical. Seven billion people, and you know how I feel about fate, yet you picked me as your best friend. I cannot be more grateful. You’ve done me a world of good, so now I’m returning the favour. I’m saying goodbye.”

So, before she can change her mind and crumble her resolve, she pulls from his slackened grasp and walks away.

(at hour 51, she says goodbye)

 

_ xx 50 hours and 28 minutes _

 

She’s not sure how she got here, tear tracks on her cheeks, but she knows that she’s asking him for help.

“Hey,” Mack says upon noticing her, “You okay, Simmons?”

“Um - I just.. I’m not really sure,” she admits, sniffling.

He blinks down at her. “Do you need anything?”

“I think I’d just like to be alone,” she concludes eventually, and to his surprise he draws keys out of his pocket and holds them out to her.

“Here. The van keys. Don’t tell Hunter, he’s been trying to get these off me since we got here.”

She stares at him for a moment, and he shakes them at her. “Go on.”

“Thank you,” she says, and he shrugs.

“Least I can do. Anything else?”

“Um.. I think.. I think perhaps you should check on Fitz,” she suggests cautiously. 

Mack nods, offers her a kindly smile. “I’ll make sure he’s okay.”

 

_ xx 50 hours _

 

She must look a sad sight. Here she is, a twenty-something girl sobbing her eyes out in the back of a van, only crying harder at the sight of commonplace things strewn across the seats. Triplett’s jacket, an empty packet of crisps, Hunter’s unfinished milkshake stuffed in the seat pocket. It’s silly that these things are making her cry, and yet she just can’t seem to stop, the tears spilling out one after the other even when she thinks she’s finally all cried out.

This is how Bobbi finds her, curled up on one of the seats, tears soaking the cushions. The blonde climbs in and shuts the door behind her, squeezing into the seat next to Jemma.

“Hey, Jemma. How are you doing?”

“Great,” she manages through gulps, and Bobbi smiles comfortingly. 

“Hey, I get you. I have a good cry every now and then too. It’s okay to let it all out, you know. It’s not healthy to keep it all bottled up. I learned that the hard way.” She offers her some tissues, and Jemma takes it with a weak smile.

“Thank you.”

“No problem. I’m saving you from Mack’s disapproval. He loves this van.” Bobbi pauses for a second. “Hey, Fitz is really upset, you know.”

Jemma glances up sharply at her. “He told you what happened?”

Bobbi shakes her head. “No. But when we found him upset, the pieces weren’t so hard to link together. You’re all he really cares about nowadays.”

She manages a humourless laugh. “I wish he wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t what? Care about you? Jemma, I don’t think there’s a world in which that boy  _ doesn’t  _ care about you,” remarks Bobbi, leaning back on the seat. “But if it helps, he’s not the only one. I care about you, Jemma. This whole team cares about you. Don’t forget that, okay?”

“I won’t,” Jemma promises, glancing up at her friend amidst her tears. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Bobbi offers.

She hesitates, glancing out the window at the parking lot. It looks oddly tranquil at this time of the evening, glorious golden sunset filtering through the windows, shining on the concrete so she can see the specks of dust swirling in the air. 

“I’m not sure if I know how to word it,” she says eventually. Beside her, Bobbi shrugs.

“You don’t have to write a novel. Just tell me what you’re thinking, how you’re feeling. That’s what helps me.”

So Jemma begins to recall all her revelations about Fitz over the past few days, in meticulous detail, and she finds that it really does help. With every word spoken it feels like a weight has been lifted off her chest, and when she’s finally finished her eyes are wet, but she’s stopped crying.

Bobbi’s silent for a long while, and they sit in the car together, these two women with their troubles, wondering just when their life got so fucked up. 

And then, finally, Bobbi’s hands find their way to Jemma’s. This is the older sister Jemma never had. 

“That emotion you’re feeling. It doesn’t go away. It might not ever go away. Do you know why I divorced Hunter?”

“Because he’s an insufferable prat who thinks being a cowboy counts as undercover?”

They both laugh, but Bobbi shakes her head. “No. Well, partly. But it was because I was afraid.”

Jemma blinks at her friend curiously. “Of what?”

Bobbi glances down for a second. “I’ve always been dedicated to SHIELD. Hunter knows that. He knew that when we got married. He was a mercenary, I was an agent, we made a simple agreement. Work comes first. I think he agreed only for my benefit.”

“That’s sweet,” Jemma says, but she’s still unsure of where this conversation is going.

“Only after he made a big fuss about it, but yeah. I guess it was.” Bobbi clears her throat. “Anyway, I got too absorbed in my job. Went undercover for a couple of weeks. He told me not to go, but I ignored him. It didn’t seem like a big deal, we always argued anyway. Halfway through, I got in trouble. A tight spot. Didn’t think I was going to make it out. The stupid man got a hold of the information, came after me. In the end, I had to bust his ass out. But if he had been one step to the right, he would have died. And that’s when I realised that I was the one putting him in constant danger. He could have died because of me.”

“So you divorced him.”

Bobbi nods. “I divorced him.”

Jemma shuffles, staring down at her hands and twisting them in her lap. “But I don’t see how that has anything to do with Fitz and I. We’re not field agents. We’re not even.. we’re not even together.”

“You didn’t let me finish my story,” she points out, and Jemma falls silent obediently. “I thought I was doing Hunter a favour. Keeping him alive. But he kept doing stupid, reckless things to try and talk to me. It was only three broken ribs and a concussion later that it struck me. There was nothing I could really do. He loved me, simple as that. No amount of me detaching myself from him was going to lessen the amount of stupid attempts by one dumb Lance Hunter.”

Jemma frowns in confusion. “I don’t understand. Your analogy is woefully insufficient.”

Bobbi smiles gently. “The thing is, Jemma, that Fitz already loves you. When you go, it’s already going to kill him. Kisses, affection, sexual intimacy, that won’t change how much it hurts after you die. It doesn’t change how much he loves you. Distancing yourself isn’t going to change anything. If anything, it’ll just make you his biggest what-if. He’ll spend the rest of his life antagonising over whether things could have been different between you. So go for it. He deserves to be happy. And so, Jemma Simmons, do you.”

And that’s it, really. That’s the momentous truth that Jemma has been searching for all this time. Oddly, it’s not as earth shattering as she’s imagined. It’s simple and it’s honest and it’s true, and Jemma can’t help but smile gratefully at Bobbi.

“I could kiss you right now.”

Bobbi laughs. “I’d welcome that, but I don’t think our boys would approve.” She reaches out and ruffles Jemma’s hair, much to her surprise (and chagrin, she’s not a  _ dog _ ). “I’m not making your decision for you, Simmons. You’re a big girl. But just so you know, Fitz is by the Ferris wheel.”

She pulls open the door to leave, but Jemma calls out before she can. “Bobbi? Thank you.”

Bobbi grins and gives her a thumbs up. “Don’t worry about it. No regrets, okay?”

Jemma nods vigorously. “No regrets.”

“Atta girl. Also, that story about Hunter stays between us. He’s already insufferable enough as it is.”

 

_ xx 49 hours and 32 minutes _

 

She finds him kicking around the back of the Ferris wheel, staring up longingly at the carriages, and she feels almost shy as she approaches, arms clung tightly to her sides and her breath caught somewhere between her throat and her chest.

“Hey, Fitz,” she says softly, and she’s relieved to see that he doesn’t look angry any more when he turns around.

“Jemma. Are you.. Are you okay? Your eyes are a bit..” He gestures to her eyes and she reaches up to them self-consciously. Puffy, most likely red. She must look a mess.

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” she says quickly. “It happens. It’s normal.”

“Good. Yeah, that’s good,” he responds awkwardly, but at least he looks relieved. “I thought it was your timer, you know..”

“Side effects don’t start until the twenty-fourth hour,” she informs. “That’s the tipping point of rapid decline.. and, well, you know what happens next.”

“Yeah. I do.” His voice is soft. They hang around awkwardly for a few beats, a couple of feet away from each other, and eventually she gives him a hesitant smile.

“Do you want to try the Ferris wheel again? Just- Just the two of us? It’s supposed to be lovely at this time of night.” Because somehow it’s become night now - the sky is swirling with stars and streaks of twilight and orange, and in the distance she hears someone chattering excitedly about fireworks.

“Sure.”

So they wait in line, and she’s very careful not to invade his personal space, and they’re completely silent until eventually they’re ushered into one of the little carriages and the door closes behind them. It’s a while before the carriage lurches into motion, and Jemma busies herself with staring out the glass until Fitz coughs somewhat awkwardly, and she turns to him.

“I suppose we have a bit to talk about.”

“That’s an understatement,” he mutters, and he seems pleasantly surprised when she laughs.

“You’re right. I’ve gone and made a right twist of things, haven’t I?”

“It’s not your fault,” he says immediately, and she fidgets awkwardly on her side of the Ferris wheel, wishing that she was sharing Fitz’s seat instead of standing on her own.

“I think it might be,” she admits. “I’ve been over-thinking things. As per usual.” She offers him a smile when he takes the bait and chuckles. “It’s just.. I’m very careful about the people I choose to love.”

“Above average fashion sense and symmetrical features, I remember,” Fitz recalls, and she just about rolls her eyes at him.

“That’s in the artificial sense of love, Fitz. Physical attraction doesn’t count, not really. Not that you’re not attractive, just, your physical qualities weren’t what drew me to you,” she adds, and she knows that she’s flushing an obvious shade of pink.

Fitz looks at her curiously. “Right.” His tone doesn’t betray anything, and she half-thinks about bailing out now, while she still has a chance. But they’re stuck in a Ferris wheel carriage, and she’s been steeling herself up to do this for so long now that it would be cowardly to back out now.

“Um, anyway. You were right, before. When you said sometimes you thought I might.. might feel the same way. I never meant to lead you on, but I suppose sometimes I couldn’t help it. When I found out how much time I had left, Fitz, I made a promise to myself. I would not fall in love with you. Because that would be..  _ immeasurably _ cruel to you. And I couldn’t be so cruel. So I tried to distance myself, tried to be a friend. A best friend, of course, but nothing more.”

“Jemma, what are you..”

She takes a small breath. “What I hadn’t accounted for was the simple truth. I’d already fallen in love with you, before all of this started. I thought that I was protecting you by rejecting you, and now I’ve realised - with a lot of help - that I was wrong. It’s not going to hurt any less when I die. And I just want you to be happy, if only for the next hours of my life. So.. if you’re willing to forgive me.. I was hoping we could rectify this whole situation?”

And, before she can think, he steps forward and presses his lips against hers. Her fingers thread into his curls, his body presses into hers, and her eyes have fluttered closed without her even meaning them to. He tastes of candy floss, and somewhere in the distance fireworks explode (rather terrifyingly close to the Ferris wheel, but she’ll rant about safety precautions later).

She is living as she is dying.

It is only when their lips part that she realises his hands are curled loosely around her hips, bunching up her shirt, and upon reopening her eyes she sees that there are tears on his eyelashes. 

“I love you, Fitz,” she says, and she can’t help but smile at his childish surprise, pulling herself closer by his lapels until she can see every single detail of his irises. “I just wanted you to hear that. Before I go.”

He sighs, and the breath is warm and sweet, and she slides her hands up his neck to bring him in for another kiss, and it is only when her feet fall back flat to the ground and his gaze slides back down to hers that she smiles tearfully at him.

“I have never been in love. So I don’t know how it feels. I don’t even know if this is right,” she confesses, resisting the urge to lick her lips. “But I know that every time I look at you, my heart beat increases past the average speed of an early twenties woman of my health and size. I know that when you thread your fingers into my hair I get electric shocks not contributable to static electricity. I know that I’m tired of Skye telling me that I look at you like you hung the moon.” She plays with the wispy curls on the back of his neck absentmindedly. “No one hung the moon. The general thesis about the moon was that it was created four point five billion years ago, when a roughly Mars-sized object of some sort hit the Earth.”

There’s a soft laugh from him. “Jemma..”

“I love you, Leopold Fitz. I am totally, irrevocably in love with you, beyond all the scientific reasoning I can think of. I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” she says, and she’s choking up, drinking his every feature in like she’s a starved woman. “It looks like I’ll be granted my wish.”

“Don’t,” he says, and his voice is dangerously low. “Don’t, please don’t. Jemma-”

“You’ll be there, won’t you?” she cuts in, somewhat desperately, and she reminds herself of a petulant child. “When I go? You won’t leave? I don’t want to die alone, Fitz.”

“Jemma!” Fitz snaps finally, hands on her shoulders. “I’m not leaving. Not ever. Okay? Don’t be stupid.” He tilts her chin up slightly. “Also, you make it very hard for a man to tell him he loves you.”

He kisses her, and all is right in this bittersweet world.

(and at hour 49, she says hello.)


	6. 'wish five' or alternatively, 'laughter'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fitz rolls his eyes, but he’s blushing. “This isn’t a rom-com, Skye. I’m not going to stand outside her window with a stereo, or kiss her in the rain.”
> 
> Skye pouts, and Jemma, feeling the pink blossoming in her cheeks, reaches down to link her hand with his. “You can, if you want. Do either of those things.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to admit this, it's not my greatest writing! I'm not very pleased with this chapter, and I was having quiet a lot of trouble, especially towards the end, but I wanted to get it out before the end of the month, and I deemed it good enough to publish, so hopefully you enjoy it nonetheless!  
> Also, the next chapter is either going to be the last, or the second to last, just as a heads up!  
> In writing this fic I have also developed a headcanon that Jemma Simmons loves all things Winnie the Pooh. I have no clue why, she just.. strikes me as a very Winnie the Pooh-esque sort of person? Also because I think Winnie the Pooh suits this story quite well.

_ xx 48 hours and 2 minutes _

 

It’s late at night - or early in the morning, she’s not quite certain - when the team finally pile into the parking lot, whooping and cheering and ignoring the glares of the workers who’d kicked them out of the amusement park in the first place. Well, mostly ignoring. Sometimes Jemma just can’t help but fret.

Jemma holds onto Fitz’s hand the entire while, and Bobbi gives her a wide smile, but otherwise nobody else seems to notice anything. It’s only when Mack and Hunter are arguing over who misplaced the van keys that Jemma plucks up the courage to press a shy kiss to Fitz’s cheek. After that, all hopes of secrecy are down the drain, because Skye’s FitzSimmons detector has finally been alerted and suddenly she’s crowing for bloody England, dancing - literally  _ dancing _ \- around them and telling them repeatedly how she is such a proud mother.

Jemma wrinkles her nose. “We’re older than you.”

Skye grins and throws her arms over their shoulders. “Let me be proud, Jemma. Oh, god, I think I’m going to cry.”

Fitz rolls his eyes, but he’s blushing. “This isn’t a rom-com, Skye. I’m not going to stand outside her window with a stereo, or kiss her in the rain.”

Skye pouts, and Jemma, feeling the pink blossoming in her cheeks, reaches down to link her hand with his. “You can, if you want. Do either of those things.”

“Aww,” Skye coos, and Fitz groans.

“You’ve started her up again!”

Jemma grins. “It was worth it.”

Bobbi nudges Hunter, who’s still sulking at Mack about the whole keys incident. “See, Hunter? Why can’t you be like that?”

“Because you wouldn’t love me if I was?” Hunter suggests, and there’s vague noises of disgust all around.

“Okay, only FitzSimmons are allowed to do that,” Skye declares, frowning at Hunter. “Otherwise it’s not cute and just.. weird. It’s like watching my older siblings kiss.”

“How is it any different with Fitz and Simmons?” Hunter protests. Skye smirks and draws Fitz and Jemma closer to her. 

“Because I would happily kiss both of them.”

“Amen to that,” Trip agrees, and Jemma is still laughing when Mack rolls his eyes and organises a man-hunt for the van keys.

 

_ xx 47 hours and 56 minutes _

 

Once they’ve finally located the keys (hint; it  _ was _ in Hunter’s back pocket after all), they cram into the van, and soon enough they’re pulling out of the parking lot. Hunter miraculously and yet unsurprisingly produces a pack of beer from the cooler in back of the van and hands them out to everyone except for Mack and Bobbi (“sorry mate, none for the drivers”), and the van is filled with horrendous singing and hollers and the loud activity that should be from a group of young adults making the most of their youth. For Jemma, she is making the most of her time, and she only holds back from telling Fitz this because he looks so happy joking with the others.

Skye leans over the back of the seat to grin at Jemma, when everybody else is arguing. “So. It finally happened.”

Jemma has to look down to hide her smile. “It finally happened,” she confirms, somewhat shyly. 

Skye raises her eyebrows suggestively. “Is he a good kisser?”

She laughs. “You sound like my sister.”

“Well, she must be amazing. I’ll have to meet her.”

“You will,” Jemma says, in dawning realisation. “You’ll meet her at my funeral. Granted, she might not be so cheery then, but give it time…” The sadness is creeping in. Sadness is creeping in, and Jemma must be a dragon. If she must be a dragon, these people are her treasures, and she will not let the thieves creep in.

“Hey,” Skye says, clearly concerned. She’s more serious now than she has been all day. “Don’t think about that, okay? Don’t worry. You’re good at worrying. But just for these last days, don’t. Let’s just be happy, okay? For Fitz, for me. For _ you _ .”

Skye extends a hand awkwardly over the seat, and Jemma grips it with a watery smile. “Okay.”

“Are you two still having girl bonding time?” Hunter asks loudly (Jemma refuses to believe he is already drunk). “Or can you come and take my side in this argument?”

Skye groans and throws her feet into Trip’s lap, much to Jemma’s disapproval (“What about your seatbelt, Skye! Or road safety!”), and Jemma props her arms on the seat in front of her and leans forward.

“What are you arguing about?” she asks lightly.

“The moon,” says Trip, still laughing. 

Jemma blinks at Hunter. “The moon? Why on Earth are you arguing over the moon? I thought someone had slept with Bobbi, the way you guys were arguing.” 

Hunter scoffs, and somewhere from the driver’s seat there’s a mutter that sounds something like, “Still a possibility.”

“Clearly, the moon was created by aliens. Trip agrees. Fitz seems to think otherwise,” Hunter says accusingly, and Jemma gives one loud snort of disbelief.

“You think the moon came about because of  _ aliens _ ? And you believe him, Triplett?”

Trip shrugs. “C’mon, girl. I know E.T’s not real, but we’ve all seen things. The Kree, Asgardians, and that’s just the beginning. Not to mention the Bermuda Triangle. Consider me spooked.”

Jemma rolls her eyes, and then beams at Fitz. “Well, as it happens, we had a discussion about the moon today.”

“By discussion, she means she talked and I listened,” Fitz interjects, and Skye grins over at them.

“Aw, you two already have an inside joke about the moon? That is  _ so _ sweet.”

Hunter pulls a face. “I think I might throw up.”

“Please don’t,” Fitz says quickly, as he turns pale and Skye continues to laugh and laugh in the background.

“Actually, you might want to get it out of your system now,” Trip says, only half-joking. “I’m thinking that this is only the beginning.”

 

_ xx 47 hours _

 

It’s almost been an hour and yet they’re still driving. What was once excited chattering and playful banter has now subsided to quiet peace. Trip, Fitz and Mack are asleep. Jemma curls up by the window, eyes half-shut, hand wound loosely in Fitz’s, and pretends to be asleep too. But really she is staring out the window at the golden and red lights of city life and traffic as they speed along the motorway. She’s not sure what time it is, but it’s late. She’s tired, but she has never felt more alive in her life. Her life is turning into one large, unprecedented irony.

She thinks she might actually fall asleep when there’s quiet murmuring from the people still awake. Hunter, Skye and Bobbi are still up, even though they look tired. Jemma doesn’t like eavesdropping but she’s sure they wouldn’t mind anyway.

“Took them long enough, didn’t it?” Hunter says, once they’ve finished wondering whether Melinda May has actually killed anybody with her death stare. 

“Fitz and Jemma? Yeah,” Skye agrees softly. “I just.. hate that it had to be this way. They’ve given up a lot for SHIELD, for each other. This doesn’t seem right. Or fair.”

“Who said life was fair?” Bobbi remarks, and there’s a pause from all three of them.

“I wonder how it happened?” asks Hunter, and there’s the unmistakable sound of him downing a bottle of water. 

“It must have been on her end,” Skye muses. “Fitz was really upset when we found him, so I’m guessing he told her how he felt and she didn’t take it well. It’s just what prompted her to approach him that’s strange.”

“Jemma’s not good with her feelings. She thinks she is but she isn’t.” It’s Bobbi speaking this time. “She categorises too many things. Everything has to have a label. Friend, Best Friend, Physical Attraction, Love. It doesn’t occur to her that one person could fit inside all of those labels. And when it does, she overcomplicates things. She’s a scientist, she’s used to things having predictable outcomes, mathematical equations, a formula to follow. Her feelings for Fitz are opposite of that. There’s nothing to predict, no safe path. If her hypothesis is incorrect, she loses him. She’s afraid of that, it’s understandable.”

There’s a long silence, so long Jemma thinks that Hunter and Skye might have fallen asleep. And then, Skye says, “It was you, wasn’t it? You sent her back to Fitz.”

“I didn’t send her back to anyone,” says Bobbi, but Jemma can tell from her tone of voice she’s smiling. “I just told her what she needed to hear, which was the truth.”

“You’re a bloody genius, Bob!” Hunter crows, and Skye shushes him quickly.

“Always the tone of surprise,” Bobbi laughs.

Jemma’s lips quirk up in the smallest of smiles, and she doesn’t even mind when Hunter goes on to expand his ridiculous ‘Aliens Created the Moon’ theory. 

 

_ xx 46 hours and 43 minutes _

 

When she’s woken gently by Fitz, she frowns at him for a little, confused.

“We’ve stopped,” he explains, in the sort of whisper reserved for the middle of the night. It sends odd thrills up her spine. “I would have carried you, but I have the body of a twelve year old, so you had to be woken, sorry.”

She smiles at him sleepily as they lumber out of the vehicle along with the others. They’re all a mass of over-tired, clumsy limbs, and she’s grateful that she has Fitz to lean on as the team traipse their way up the driveway. She recognises where they are now - it’s a big estate, closer possibly to a mansion, and if that weren’t enough of a clue, there’s a SHIELD symbol on the gate and a red car parked nearby.

“Coulson’s?” she asks blearily.

Bobbi smiles and nudges her. “Where else?”

“It’s funny,” Jemma remarks, although she’s not sure whether it really is funny, or whether she’s just tired. “It’s fitting that this is where my journey ends. After all, this is where it all began.” She glances at these people -  _ her _ people, her  _ family _ \- and she can’t stop her smile. “For us, anyway.”

“Do you remember our first mission?” Mack chuckles.

Hunter groans. “Don’t remind me.”

“Oh, please do,” Skye’s amused voice floats through the air as they enter the building. The lights flicker on when Bobbi flashes their ID cards at the scanner. 

Jemma catches the glow from her timer, and she’s not sure what compels her to joke, but she does anyway. “At least I can keep track of the time easily.”

Fitz stiffens, and she pulls away, surprised, as he detaches himself to say goodnight to the others. Within moments, he’s disappeared up the stairs. She’s still staring after him, wide-eyed, when Bobbi gives her a sympathetic smile and a one-armed hug.

“Did I do something wrong?”

Bobbi shakes her head. “You should talk to him about that. Have a good night, okay? Hunter and I are in the usual room if you need us, okay? Don’t hesitate to come in.”

Jemma nods gratefully. “I won’t.” 

Bobbi turns away and proceeds down the hallway with Mack and Hunter, and Jemma slips into place next to Skye and Trip as they make the short journey up the stairs to their rooms. 

“I miss this place,” Skye slurs. Jemma and Trip both laugh. 

“Remember that one time we tried to take Lola for a spin?” Trip recalls.

Jemma rolls her eyes. “We let Skye drive, and she scratched the bumper.”

“Okay,” Skye splutters. “You guys do not get to complain! You threw me under the bus.”

“That’s because Coulson likes you best,” Trip counters, but they’re all laughing anyway. 

They pull up in front of the door Jemma knows is Skye’s (and Trip’s now too, she supposes) room, and she rubs her temples. “It’s too early for all this nostalgia.”

“Tomorrow, then?”

“Tomorrow,” Jemma promises. “Good night.”

“ _ Technically _ , it’s morning.”

Jemma and Trip exchange looks. “She’s a bit drunk,” they both conclude, and when their door shuts and Jemma is left alone, she’s still smiling. 

Fitz is exactly where she thought he’d be: his room. It still looks more or less the same as the first day they’d arrived to work for Coulson; minus the added mess, collage of pictures, and scattered blueprints. He’s sitting on the bed when she eases open the door, and her footsteps are soft as she crosses over to sink into the mattress beside him.

“Are you alright?” she prompts gently. “You can tell me anything, you know.”

“I’m fine.”

“Fitz..”

He glances up, but he’s not looking at her. He’s fixated on the spread of pictures pinned up on the wall. “I wish you wouldn’t,” he says eventually.

“Wouldn’t what, Fitz?”

_ Now _ he’s looking at her. “Wouldn’t joke about it.”

“Oh.” She realises now. “I’m sorry.”

He grimaces, and without warning, falls back on the bed. “You shouldn’t be. I’m being selfish, is all.”

She kicks off her shoes and folds her legs, and the act is familiar, well-practiced from days of studying in Fitz’s room. 

“I don’t think you are,” she tells him truthfully. 

Fitz glances at her. “You don’t think so?”

“No. It’s not a bad thing. Being afraid, that is. It’s a natural reaction. It’s what makes all of us human. Being afraid is what spurred our evolution. That’s how we came to be today.”

“I thought curiosity was what spurred us.”

“Well, that too,” she concedes, with a smile. 

He turns his head to stare up at the ceiling, and Jemma mirrors his position, lying flat on her back to stare up at the creamy white paint. Her hand finds Fitz’s, and she grips on, not for dear life, but to remind him that she hasn’t left yet. 

“Are you scared?” Fitz asks quietly. 

Jemma considers this for a moment. “Yeah.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be. My mum says it’s just like life before you were born. Wasn’t so bad, was it?”

She smiles. “I like your mum.”

“Funnily enough, so do I,” remarks Fitz, and Jemma laughs. He doesn’t speak for a while. “Do you ever wonder what it would have been like? If things were different?”

“You mean like alternate realities?”

“I s’pose, yeah. Do you believe in them?”

“Well.” Jemma thinks for a moment. “I certainly believe that it’s  _ possible _ . There’s nothing concrete to suggest that alternate realities are fully and truly real.. and yet, there’s nothing to say that they aren’t, either. It’s quite a perplexing thing to think about, isn’t it?”

Fitz makes a vague noise of agreement. “In another reality, your timer might not have broken. Maybe in one, you don’t even have a timer.”

“In another reality, we might never have met,” Jemma points out. She’s realised why Fitz is so hooked on the idea of alternate realities now, and she props herself up so she is leaning on her elbows. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world, you know. I don’t regret any of it.”

Fitz glances doubtfully at her. “Not any of it?”

“Not even a second.” And to prove it, she presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. Shyly, because kissing Fitz is still new, and she is not quite used to the burst of butterflies in her stomach whenever she realises she can kiss him whenever she pleases. 

“Neither do I,” Fitz admits, and he mirrors her pleased smile. “I’m just.. not sure what I’m going to do after.”

“You’ll be fine,” Jemma reassures softly. “Maybe you’ll turn into the grumpy old man who babysits for Skye occasionally. Maybe you’ll do something heroic and Coulson will finally let you work on Lola. Maybe you’ll find a pretty girl with a nice smile, and you’ll get a dog and have a few children for Hunter to spoil rotten.”

“But she won’t be you.”

“She won’t be me,” Jemma agrees. “But maybe that’s okay, Fitz. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be.”

Fitz’s voice is solemn, quiet. He doesn’t meet her eyes. “I don’t want it to be that way.”

She smiles at him sleepily. “Things rarely turn out the way we want them to.” She rests her head in the crook of his arm. “It’s alright. It’s okay. I like my life. I like you. I like all the things that make my view of the world so beautiful. Sometimes a story ends. You just have to move on to a new one.”

He grips the sleeve of her blouse tightly. “What if I don’t want to?”

“You have to,” Jemma insists, but not unkindly. “That’s the funny thing about life. Sometimes things are inevitable.”

He says something more, but she doesn’t quite register it, because she’s falling asleep. Not that she'll remember it in the morning, but it sounds a little bit like, " _Not always._ "

 

_ xx 37 hours and 34 minutes _

 

“Jemma. Jemma, wake up.”

“Mmm. Just a few more minutes, please.”

“Jemma!”

It’s the alarm in his voice that does the trick, and with a whole lot of difficulty, she cracks her eyes open, immediately blinking at the sudden brightness. 

“Fitz?” she asks sleepily, once her vision has adjusted to see familiar blue eyes peering down at her. They’re creased in worry, and she forces herself to be more alert. “Is everything alright?”

“It is now,” Fitz says, and it comes out more of an exhale of relief. 

“That’s great. Now if you don’t mind,” broken by a yawn, “I’d like to get back to sleep.”

“No!” Fitz shakes her shoulder, and her eyes fly back open. “You can’t! It’s half past eleven, Jemma.”

“Half past..?” she echoes sluggishly. “Oh dear. Just a few more minutes will do, I think..”

“Jemma! Since when have you slept past ten? I would have woken you sooner, but we had a late night and I thought... You’re not tired, Jemma, it’s your  _ timer _ .”

These words finally make her pay attention. She forces her eyes wide open, with difficulty, and focuses all her energy on sitting upright. 

“I’m getting closer,” she realises, and for the first time, a bout of panic is beginning to settle in. “My body is starting to conserve energy, to prolong the lifespan.”

Fitz swallows. “Yeah. But you can’t go to sleep, okay? You have to stay awake.”

She trains all her energy on focusing on him. “Okay.”

 

_ xx 37 hours _

 

Upon May’s advice, she takes a cold shower. It works, and she feels more awake when she steps out. Her movements are still a little slower than usual, but given that she is literally a genius, her thoughts still run at a million miles an hour. She slings her hair into a ponytail, downs some water, and then heads downstairs to the common room, where everybody is already gathered. Trip, Skye and Hunter all sit on one couch, hunched over a book of some sort. Bobbi sits on the arm of the couch with a bowl of cereal, and Mack and Fitz take up the other sofa, controllers in their hands, playing some sort of shooter that she can’t name.

“Simmons! We heard what happened,” Skye says, throwing herself at Jemma, and she hugs her tightly.

“How are you feeling?” questions Mack.

“I’m alright,” she assures. “It’s just side effects. They’ll only get worse from here, I’m afraid, but that’s how it is.” She almost says, _ I’ll live _ , and then stops herself abruptly. Because the truth is.. she won’t. Instead she shivers, just as May and Coulson walk in. 

“May!” Jemma says, surprised. “I thought you were going to help Dr. Garner?”

May smiles in the small way that only she can manage. “He can manage for a few days. I was called back for something of more importance.”

May doesn’t elaborate, so Jemma doesn’t press, instead smiling at Coulson and May.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she admits, rubbing the goosebumps on her arms.

“Us too,” says Coulson, eyes following her movement. He grimaces apologetically. “Sorry. We turned down the heating when Fitz told us what happened. Warmth makes you-”

“-sleepy, I know. Thank you, sir.”

Coulson nods. “I’m sorry, Jemma, but we have some things to do..”

“Oh! Right, yes. You’re busy. Sorry.” She steps to the side quickly as Coulson and May both move on.

“We’ll drop by for dinner,” May murmurs as she passes by, and Jemma is left rather pleased.

“Breakfast?” offers Bobbi, holding out a bowl of muesli. “Well, more like lunch, but you get the point.”

Jemma grins and accepts the muesli. “Don’t worry about me, Bobbi. It’s fashionable to be late, you know.”

Bobbi rolls her eyes. “Not funny.”

“Better late than never?” she tries, and it’s nice to have a bit of humour in her life.

“Still not funny. Eat your muesli, Simmons.”

As she’s digging into her first spoonful, there’s several calls from Hunter, Skye and Trip, beckoning her to come over.

“Look at this,” Skye coos, pointing at the book as Jemma settles down next to her. It’s not so much a book, Jemma realises, as a photo album. Skye’s looking at a picture of Skye, Jemma and Fitz, back on their first day at SHIELD, and Jemma can’t help but smile.

“I’d forgotten about that,” she admits. 

“You guys look like little babies,” Hunter jokes.

“That’s because we were,” Fitz says, and Jemma glances up to see that everybody else has now gathered around the photo album, perched on the coffee table for a place to rest.

“There’s more photo albums in the box over there,” Trip suggests, and that’s how they spend the next two hours, poring over old photographs, laughing over the stories that come with them. Somewhere along the line Skye produces a polaroid from out of nowhere, and then ensue the round of picture taking amongst the team. 

“Write something on it,” Skye prompts, waving a marker at her, and so, with a laugh, Jemma uncaps the marker and thinks for a moment.

“What should I write?”

“Anything.” Skye shrugs. “Be as stupid or cheesy as you want.”

So Jemma pauses, and then she scribbles along the back of the polaroid:  _ if there ever comes a day where we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, i’ll stay there forever _ .

Skye reads it out loud, somewhat misty-eyed, but with a smirk. “What famous scholar said that?”

Jemma grins. “Winnie the Pooh.”

“Of course,” laughs Skye.

 

_ xx 34 hours _

 

Somewhere along the line, Jemma admits that she’s still tired, and in an effort to rejuvenate her spirits, Skye and Hunter decide to drag everybody out to the pool out the back. She’s too weary to swim, but she sits herself on the edge of the pool and kicks her feet in the water, smiling as Bobbi and Trip attempt to outswim each other, and Hunter complains about being sunburnt, and Skye and Mack attempt to shove each other into the pool.

“You okay?” Fitz asks, appearing at her shoulder and handing her a glass of water.

“Just watching,” Jemma tells him as he sits down beside her. “And thinking, I suppose.”

Fitz smiles. “You do that a lot.”

“It’s one of my best qualities.” She takes a drink of water, and when he doesn’t say anything, she nudges him. “What’s wrong?”

He glances down at the water. “I just.. I don’t think the reality of it really hit me until this morning. When you wouldn’t wake up. I don’t understand how.. I don’t understand how all of you can be so unbothered. Everyone else is laughing and joking and having fun, but when I wake up in the morning I just feel…”

“Sad?” she suggests. He shakes his head.

“Lonely. I just feel lonely.”

She thinks about this for a moment, as her hand glides down to twist her fingers with his. “We all feel a little lonely sometimes. It’s an odd thought, isn’t it? To feel so, utterly, completely alone in a world full of seven billion others.” She flashes him a wry smile. “We lead lonely lives, Fitz.”

He returns it in full. “You made my life a little less lonely when you walked into my world.”

And with that, she twists her body around to pull him into a hug. He smells a bit of chlorine, and of the standard issue SHIELD shampoo, but underneath all that he’s still him. A little sad, a little broken, but he’s still there.

“Me too.”

 

_ xx 28 hours _

 

It’s night time now, and orange bleeds into the deep purple hues of night. They’re still out by the pool, but it’s quieter now. Fireflies dance in the distance, but the real beauty is the people around her. Candles light up a soft glow. The pool ripples softly, an abandoned floatie carving tiny waves into the water. Hunter tries to help Trip man the barbecue, and everyone is laughing at the antics provided by them, perched on blankets spread out on the grass.

Jemma still feels somewhat sluggish, but she wouldn’t give this moment up for the world. She’s going to miss these people when she leaves. She’s not sure of her stand on the thoughts of afterlife, but she likes to believe that somehow, they’ll be deep down enough in her bones for her to carry a little piece of them forever.

She laughs, hand over her mouth, when Hunter makes a big show out of proving that he can cook, following up by immediately dropping a hotdog. Trip is laughing so hard he forgets about the food still on the grill, and eventually it’s Mack who swoops in to save the day, and thus ends the disaster of cooking.

And then eventually, they sit what might resemble a lumpy circle, eating food and laughing and sharing stories.

“Did I ever tell you guys about the time Simmons tried to lie?” Skye manages through wheezes of laughter, and Jemma glares at her.

“Skye! You promised secrecy!”

“Did I?” Skye blinks innocently, and then carries on to tell the whole story. Jemma doesn’t mind, not really, but she puts up a show of huffing and rolling her eyes to get laughs out of everybody else, and it’s very much worth it when it works. 

 

_ xx 26 hours _

 

They’ve died down into a peaceful sort of quiet now. Jemma sits cross-legged, a blanket draped over her lap, leaning on Fitz’s shoulder, with Skye on her other side. When the light conversation finally dies down, she clears her throat and sits up straighter.

“I’ve been trying to get the courage to say this all night,” she admits, glancing down as all eyes train on her. “I was.. I was planning this speech in my head, because you know me.”

“You excel at preparation,” comes a chorus, followed by laughter.

She smiles. “Exactly. But every time I voiced this in my head, it all came out.. stilted. Wrong. I kept trying to quantify all my thoughts into something manageable. You can’t quantify feelings, as I’ve discovered. Or maybe you can, and I just haven’t figured out how yet. But anyway, I was just.. I had this whole speech planned. I outlined everything I was going to see with a mental highlighter. I made bullet points inside my head. But then I realised.. I keep coming to the same conclusion.”

She hesitates, and from across the circle, Bobbi gives her an encouraging smile. 

“I love you guys,” she says finally. “I don’t know how or when or why it happened, but I do. And I know you might think I’m going a bit delirious, but I can promise that it is not my timer provoking me to say this. Because I mean it, from the bottom of my heart. I do. I swear. And my time is short, but I don’t think I would have rather spent it any other way. I began twenty-three years ago. I end tomorrow. But I don’t regret today, or yesterday, or the day before that, because..” Jemma pauses, trying to find an explanation. When she fails, she shrugs and smiles. “Because I don’t. Sure, there are things I could have done better, should have done better, would have done better. But I didn’t. And I won’t. So I really think I mean it when I say that I’m okay with this. I really think I mean it when I say that you guys made everything worth it. And I really think I mean it when I say I’m happy with the way things turned out.”

 

_ xx 24 hours _

 

They fall asleep not long after, but they don’t move. They sleep out there, on the grass, and Jemma thinks it’s fitting that they end this night under the stars, all together, because she cannot imagine any other way that this could have gone.


	7. 'the end' or alternatively, 'the beginning'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You promised me you wouldn’t try and figure a way around this,” she accuses. “You said that what happens happens.”
> 
> “I never directly promised anything,” he points out, and he’s obviously aware that was the wrong thing to say, because he stops abruptly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello old friend. And here we are. You and me, on the last page.  
> Sorry, but hey! (Kudos if you spot the reference!) I finally did it! And after months of staring at a blank page and blinking cursor, here we are, with a finished fic! I'm honestly really surprised and pleased by the attention this received, so thank you so much! I really do hope that you enjoy this. It's been a hell of a ride.

_ xx 12 hours _

 

She wakes up, not to the dewy grass of the back garden, but instead all wrapped up in the cotton sheets of a blanket, staring up at the cream ceiling with her eyes half-lidded in sleep, with a pounding in her head and beads of sweat on her forehead and a scratching in her throat that doesn’t seem as if it will ever go away. 

But she also wakes up to Leopold Fitz, currently curled up in the chair next to her with a book, so she manages a smile.

“Hey.” 

He jumps about a mile high in the air, but he returns her smile. 

“Hey.”

“You look tired,” she observes, and she’s sort of pleased when he laughs.

“Sure.  _ I _ look tired.” He pauses, cautious hope flickering in his eyes. “How about you? Feeling better?”

Jemma doesn’t really want to shatter Fitz’s bubble, but she always believes in the whole-hearted truth, and perhaps more importantly, science, so she shakes her head. 

“Of course not, Fitz.”

“Right,” he says, nonchalantly, but she can see straight through him. 

“Hey,” she says gently. “You know the statistical probabilities. The chances of a timer rebooting itself are slim to  _ none _ . Besides, of the few rare cases in which it does happen, the patient was very fit. In perfect health, good eating habits and a regular exercise routine.”

“ _ You’re _ healthy —”

“We spent most of our time cooped up in the lab, Fitz. Working alongside dangerous chemicals, out of the sunlight, eating pizza, and if I recall correctly, exercise wasn’t exactly at the top of our To-Do lists.”

Fitz looks appropriately upset, but she doesn’t have the strength or the will to argue, so instead she extends a hand out to him.

“I don’t want to fight, okay? I just want to enjoy my last day, with the people I care about. That includes you,” she adds, a small burst of warmth flooding through her veins at he tentatively grabs her hand, a tiny smile on his features. How had she been missing the look in his eyes all these years? Maybe sometimes, it just takes a time limit to bring everything out into the open.

“Okay.”

And it’s just one word, but it encompasses everything she needs to hear, and the pounding in her head fizzles somewhat. 

“Okay,” she echoes, sealing the deal, and then she turns her head to the side, snuggling into the pillow. “I’m tired.”

“I know,” Fitz says, his grip getting tighter. “Don’t go to sleep on me just yet, okay? We still have time left.”

“Of course,” she murmurs, stretching lazily, despite the way the lights are far too bright. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. This is going to be the best twelve hours of my life.”

 

 

_ xx 10 hours and 34 minutes _

 

Okay, so maybe the best twelve hours of her life isn’t an accurate description. This doesn’t really beat the family holiday she once took with her family, or the time they’d surprised Skye with a birthday party, or even these past few days of weighted bliss, but it’s nice all the same, and she doesn’t think she’d have it any other way.

They’re all squished into Jemma’s room, piled on the bed, sitting in chairs pulled up, even creatively sitting on the window sill, all staring intently at the Monopoly board spread out on the bed. Everyone’s made it—even May, and it’s a little cramped, but Hunter’s promised that he actually showered today and she loves everyone in the room anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

“Not trying to be rude or anything,” says Mack, as May’s dishing out the money (she was elected bank without discussion), “but Monopoly’s a weird choice for your last day.”

“Maybe I just like to win,” Jemma jokes, but really, she’s chosen Monopoly because it’s the only distraction that she can partake in while feeling so drowsy. 

“Like anybody’s going to beat May,” Skye snorts, and even May manages a small smirk.

“I’ll have you know, I bet May in Monopoly once,” Coulson announces, and he’s met with skeptical looks at once. “What? I  _ did _ .”

“It was his birthday,” May explains, deadpan, and the whole room erupts with laughter. 

“Excuses, excuses,” Coulson mumbles. “We should play Jenga next. I’m great at Jenga.”

 

 

_ xx 10 hours _

 

“I need to use the bathroom,” Fitz says, crawling out of the bed sheets and carefully around the money, and Jemma’s almost embarrassed to feel so utterly devastated when he leaves, blinking rapidly. She knows it must be the side effects of the timer messing with her mind, but a nasty little part of her keeps whispering  _ ‘what if you never see him again?’  _ and  _ ‘what if something happens and the last time you see Fitz before you die is him, tripping over someone’s misplaced shoe on the way out the door?’  _ and it doesn’t help when he takes an absurdly long time to come back. She counts the minutes on her wrist, trying to pretend that she isn’t, and she doesn’t realise how tense she is until Bobbi places a comforting hand on her arm.

“It’s your turn,” she says, but her eyes are soft and Jemma knows she means  _ ‘you’re okay’. _

“Of course it is,” Jemma nods, taking a small breath.

“You’re losing,” Mack points out when she doesn’t move, and it’s odd, because he knows exactly what to say to get her working again. 

“You forget—Jemma Simmons doesn’t lose. Ever,” interjects Triplett with a teasing laugh, and on goes the game.

She plays, and she laughs, and she  _ does _ enjoys herself, but with every passing moment that Fitz is gone, she keeps thinking that it’s a moment missed. And she’s just thinking that he’s been gone for an unnaturally long time (or perhaps she’s being paranoid) when he appears at the door, hovering between the boundaries, hands fussing with the buttons on his shirt.

“Pizza’s arrived,” he says, and she doesn’t need a psychic bond to understand that it’s an excuse to get everyone downstairs.

Still, everyone gets the hint and begins to file out. Skye lingers for only a moment to pull Jemma into a tight hug before disappearing as well.

Jemma adjusts the blankets and tries to ignore the ache in her throat, or the alarm wailing in her head. 

“Something the matter, Fitz?”

He hesitates for only a second. “No. Not really.”

“ _ Fitz. _ ”

“I haven’t been entirely honest with you,” he admits.

“What do you mean,” she says quietly.

“When you were sleeping, or with your family, or busy, I’ve been—well, I’ve been working on something.”

“Working on what?” she asks, although a part of her—in fact,  _ most _ of her—already knows.

“On your timer,” he manages quickly, and she’s immediately overwhelmed with an odd mix of endearment, irritation, and most of all, fury.

“You promised me you wouldn’t try and figure a way around this,” she accuses. “You said that what happens happens.”

“I never directly promised anything,” he points out, and he’s obviously aware that was the wrong thing to say, because he stops abruptly. 

“Say what you need to say,” she says eventually. He wrings his hands.

“Remember the first day you told me about your timer? And I mentioned that my mum had a friend who worked at the hospital?” 

Jemma remembers. She nods, tight-lipped, lines creasing her forehead. 

“So,” Fitz continues, “it turns out he had a friend who had been working on the effects of timers for years. I got in contact with him, and it turns out that he just needed the help of an engineering genius with a brilliant biochemist’s notes.”

She sits up, eyes wide. Her mouth is suddenly dry. “You used my notes? You found a cure?” 

“Yes,” he smiles, but the split second of hesitation is all she needs.

“What’s wrong.” 

Fitz blinks. “Sorry?"

“I  _ know _ you Fitz, you would have told me sooner if everything was fine. So what is it? What’s the catch?” 

He stays quiet for a long time. 

“The vaccine hasn’t been developed, or trialled, or tested yet. We’ve only got the potential; the schematics, we’re still working on the—”

“So you don’t have it,” she confirms, hope draining away like she’s pulled the bath plug to her emotions. 

“We do,” Fitz says desperately. “Or—We  _ will _ .”

“But how long do you estimate the anti-serum will take?” she fires back. 

“Two years,” he admits, and she squeezes her eyes shut. 

“Leo, please don’t suggest what I think you’re about to suggest—” 

In true Fitz fashion, he does it anyway: “If I just transferred some of my time over to your timer it would be—”

“No.”

“But—”

“I  _ won’t _ , Fitz,” she says with an air of finality. Fitz’s expression turns to an odd middle of hard and crestfallen. 

“Why not?”

“Because,” she splutters, “ _Because_ you’d be giving up two years of your life for me! Two years!”

“I’ve already given up six for you,” he says quietly, and she sucks in a breath. 

“Don’t…” 

“Did you know that I spent months at the Academy trying to impress you? None of it worked of course, you were too brilliant for me, but even afterwards I don’t think I ever stopped. Trying to impress you, I mean. Remember Dean?” 

“You broke his nose. Rightfully too, he insulted your mum.” 

“I could have left him alone,” he admits. “I could have been the better man, but you looked so impressed when Triplett defended Skye that I just.. hit him. And I didn’t really regret it, because he deserved it. But you weren’t impressed.” 

“Oh, Fitz,” she says gently, “of course I was.” 

Fitz shakes his head, stubborn. “You weren’t. You spent the night telling me off and reciting Academy guidelines.” 

“I—”

“It’s okay. I never managed to impress you. So I’m doing it now. Going behind your back. Giving you my time. Saving your life.” He smiles wryly. “Impressed?”

“Fitz,” she manages finally, “I could slap you.” And she still might. But for now she climbs out of bed and pulls his head down for a gentle kiss, hands cradling his jaw, hoping that it conveys everything she wants to tell him. 

And when she pulls away, light-headed and dizzy (from her timer, but the kiss is certainly a big factor), she gives him her sharpest look. 

“Fitz. I am  _ always _ impressed by you. And I couldn’t shut up about you for weeks after you punched Dean. Which is precisely why I can’t take your time.” She offers him a small smile. “You’ve got others to impress.” 

“But I don’t want to impress anyone else,” he protests, and she can’t help but laugh at how ridiculous this whole conversation has begun. He smiles too, but his heart’s not in it, especially when she sways and has to sit down rather sharply. 

“Please say yes,” he pleads, falling into the bed beside her and threading her fingers through his. “You  _ have _ to. I won't do it without your consent, but—”

She reaches forward to draw a piece of Monopoly money out from under his leg, just so she doesn’t have to meet his eyes. Because she knows if she does, she will undoubtedly give in.

“I don’t  _ have  _ to do anything,” she reminds firmly. “I won’t let you give up two years.”

“What if he gives up a few months?” suggests a new voice, and Bobbi steps into the room, followed by the rest of the team. 

Jemma whirls on Fitz, who’s mouth is open wide in surprise. 

“You told the team about this?” she accuses. 

He shakes his head vehemently. “No, I swear—”

“He’s in the clear, love,” Hunter cuts in, his grin possibly wider than she’s ever seen it. And that’s counting the day he and Bobbi got married. For the second time. 

“It was all May’s idea,” Coulson says proudly. 

Jemma fixes her with a questioning look. “May..?” 

“I tracked Fitz’s emails and phone calls as soon as you told me the news,” May supplies calmly. “Found out he was contacting some scientists. I knew he would do something out of hand.”

“You didn’t really think she’d go and see Andrew while you were running out of time, did you?” Trip asks.

“I.. I didn’t..”

“I found out what was going on, made a few phone calls myself. I told the team a couple of minutes ago,” May continues.

“We’re here to give you our time,” Bobbi explains. “Fitz says you need two years. Between the eight of us, that’s three months. No big deal. We can get that for you.”

Jemma blinks, still floored by the revelation and swallowing hard. “But that’s still months of your life..”

“Simmons.  _ Jemma _ ,” Trip says gently. “Three months is nothing when it comes to saving you. We’re SHIELD agents, we tend to live shorter lives either way. I’d much rather give you the ability to live than have a few more days being an old man.”

“Besides,” Hunter adds, with a knowing grin towards Fitz, “not to give you a heightened sense of importance but.. I think some people kind of need you in their lives.”

She glances over to Fitz, who has somehow recovered from shock and instead is grinning widely, cheeks dimpled in a smile. He squeezes her hand, just once, and she nods breathlessly. 

“Okay.”

 

 

_ xx 6 hours and 54 minutes _

 

“Are you positive about this?”

Fitz glances over at her with a fond eye roll. “Yes, Jemma. For the fifth time, I am definitely certain about this. Please don’t make me answer again.”

She smiles at his teasing and then nudges his leg with her foot. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“I just…” She leans her head on his shoulder, silently revelling as their legs tangle together. “I can’t believe you were willing to throw away two years of your time for me.”

Fitz stirs, like he’s genuinely surprised. “I wouldn’t be throwing it away, Jemma. You deserve it.” There’s a beat of shy silence, and then, “For the record, I’d give you all of my time if you needed it.”

Jemma pulls away, mouth parting in endearment, or perhaps surprise, or even a deeper, warmer feeling that she’s been too afraid to admit before now. 

“I mean it,” he adds quickly, like he’s afraid she’s going to protest. 

She winds her fingers through his, breath catching even though this has hardly been the first time.

“What I was going to say is,” she says delicately, “I would too.” 

And, to prove it, she draws him in for a slow and lingering kiss, fingers cradling his jaw, curling into his hair, kissing like they have all the time left in the world. (Which isn’t strictly true, but even the mere possibility of a happily ever after sends tingles down her spine—but that might also be attributed to the fact that Leopold Fitz is rather good at kissing.) 

 

 

_ xx 4 hours _

 

Jemma sits with Skye, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders to help the shivers that have started to erupt sporadically. 

On the other side of the room, crowded around a bulky machine that Jemma’s time-addled mind can’t make proper sense of, everybody else talks over each other, loudly arguing, their insults so ridiculous it brings a smile to her face. 

“They’re idiots, aren’t they?” Skye laughs, bumping her shoulder with her own.

“Fools,” she agrees fondly. “But don't tell them I said that.” 

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Skye says, and they fall silent for a long while, just watching. 

“Can I tell you something?” Jemma asks.

Skye blinks in surprise. “Of course.” 

“Growing up, I never imagined I would be so…” 

“Happy?” Skye suggests. Jemma smiles. 

“I was going to say loved, but yes. This whole week, everything that I’ve done and said and  _ felt _ , it feels surreal. It feels honest, but I don’t think.. I don’t think I ever would have said any of those things without my timer. So in a way, I’m kind of grateful, you know.”

Skye pauses for only a moment. “Well, I’m not. You gave us quite a scare. You’re like the glue, you know? Sometimes I think you don’t realise how important you are to us. I mean, I don't know about you, but I know a certain  _ someone _ who wouldn't know what to in a world without you.”

Jemma glances down to hide her smile. “This plan might not even work. You’ll have wasted your months for nothing.”

“It’ll work,” Skye says confidently. “The story of Jemma Simmons does not end here.”

“Doesn't it?”

Skye reaches over to squeeze Jemma’s hand. 

“Nope. Your story’s not even halfway done, Jemma.”

She smiles. “How can you tell?”

“Because,” says Skye seriously, light and hope and _honesty_ dancing in her eyes, “your story is intertwined with ours. And we don't leave anyone behind.”

Jemma grins wide and ignores the shiver crawling it's way up her spine, ignores the sweat that breaks out on her forehead.

“I like the sound of that.”

 

 

_ xx 3 hours _

 

“How’s it going?” she asks, as Skye steps forward in Fitz’s place while he takes a quick break. He’d wanted to keep working, but Jemma had pleaded him to stop. Just for a little bit, just to sit with her.

She bites her lip and hands him a glass of water, teeth digging down harder when she notes the way her hand shakes vehemently and water spills over the side. Fitz shoots out a hand to still her, and she flashes him a small, worried smile.

“It’s going fine. We’ll get it done,” he assures.

She’s not sure why she’s so anxious, given that she’d been perfectly fine a few hours ago. She thinks maybe it’s the hope.

“I... I have something to confess,” she blurts out. It’s not what she meant to say, but she’s glad she said it.

Fitz glances at her, halfway between attentive and worry, and she screws her eyes shut for a moment and takes a deep breath.

“This whole trip, the bucket list, none of it was about me,” she says quickly. “I remembered that you wanted to go to the museum, and of course you’d want to see the zoo monkeys. We went to your Gran’s because I know you miss her, and we went to my family because they  _ do _ care about you, and Lily misses you, and I didn’t want you to drift apart from each other. And the team, well, maybe that was a bit selfish, but I just wanted to be with my friends, with my family. The theme park was for the team,” she admits. “But everything—everything else was for you. I promise.”

She’s breathing heavy now, gasping for breath, light-headed, but that doesn’t quite matter right now because Fitz is giving her one of Those Looks, sliding his fingers between hers, clinging so tight that her knuckles her turning white.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he accuses, but quietly.

“I know.” She shrugs. “But I wanted to. You are.. You’re very important to me, Fitz.”

Fitz comes in for a kiss, gentle and sweet and soft, the feel of his lips lingering even after he pulls away with a smile.

“Guess what?” he asks.

She smiles. “What?”

“You’re important to me too. And we’re going to fix this, yeah?”

There’s something about his belief that’s contagious; her smile turns into a grin. “Yeah.”

 

 

_ xx 2 hours _

 

“Beer?”

Jemma stares at the drink held out to her. “You’re  _ seriously  _ offering me that?”

Hunter shrugs and drops himself down next to her, cracking open the lid and taking a swig. “Your loss, sweetheart. Beer makes everything better.”

“That’s because you’re an alcoholic,” she points out, rolling her eyes. She holds out a hand expectantly anyway. Hunter, grinning, places a bottle in her grip.

“You’re tougher than you look, princess.”

Jemma manages to still her trembling fingers long enough to pop open the lid, bringing the bottle to her lips. “What is with all the pet names?”

“It’s all part of my aesthetic.”

She scoffs, takes a small sip, then glances at him speculatively out of the corner of her eye. “Anyway, I thought you would have learned not to judge by appearances. You live with May. And Mack. Looks are deceiving. Apart from you.”

Hunter frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She shrugs. “Whatever you want it to mean.”

“Stop being so cryptic.”

“I like being cryptic. Gives you something to think about after the crippling pain of my death.”

It’s Hunter’s turn to roll his eyes. “You shouldn’t joke about that. There’ll be another round of tears from the others.”

“But not from you?”

“Nah. Humour’s my coping mechanism.”

Jemma flashes him a curious look. “So you  _ do  _ care.”

“‘Course I care. Tiny British scientist dies, that’s another loss for my country. And my team.”

“Not  _ your  _ team,” she reminds.

“Not  _ yours  _ either,” he counters.

“ _ Our _ team,” she settles on eventually. They fall silent for a moment, drinking out of beer bottles. She’s just adjusting the blanket around her shoulders when she catches his line of sight and follows it: Bobbi.

“You love her, don’t you?” Jemma remarks.

“Yeah. And I know what you’re going to say—I’m not good enough for her, all that baloney—”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” she protests. 

He raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Well, only a little bit,” she concedes. “But what I was really going to say was… I think she’s lucky to have you.”

Hunter’s clearly surprised. “What?”

“Don’t make me say it again, Hunter.”

He chuckles, and then, “You love him, don’t you?”

Automatically, her eyes seek out Fitz. He’s laughing at something Trip has said, and almost like he knows she’s looking, turns and catches her eye. He smiles, wide and hopeful, and it holds a little trace of something that makes her heart skip a beat.

“Yes,” she tells Hunter. “I do. Of course I do.”

“Well.. he’s lucky to have you too,” he says. She smiles at him.

“You’re ruining your bad-boy reputation.”

“Don’t tell Bob, but I don’t think I ever had one to begin with,” he chuckles, reclining and kicking his feet up on the table—before immediately dropping them at May’s look.

“I’m pretty sure she knows, Hunter. In fact, I think  _ everyone  _ knows.”

“Shush, you.”

 

 

_ xx 1 hour _

 

She’s chewing her lip so hard she’s sure she can taste the blood in her mouth, but she can’t help it. The closer they come, the worse she gets. And worse is worse, some deity decided that it would be a good idea for her to google side effects of transferring time. Gruesome images meet her, horrifying descriptions jump out from the page, and she has to slam her phone down hurriedly to squeeze the thoughts out of her mind.

“Google tends to make things up,” says Bobbi, cruising in like a miracle. “Here, pass it over.”

Jemma gives it obediently, and within seconds it’s been handed back, after Bobbi does something to it.

“I changed your password,” she explains. “Not as some cruel prank—although that’s a good idea. So you can’t be tempted to look up more bad things. I know you’re a scientist, but sometimes knowing all the facts makes things worse.”

“I’m just worried,” Jemma admits. “What if the machine malfunctions? Or they’ve built it wrong, and you guys lose all your time and get hurt because of me, or—”

“Seems to be working fine to me.”

Jemma jumps. “What?”

Bobbi smiles. “May’s getting her time transferred over to the bank now. It should take a while, but so far so good.” At Jemma’s expression, she adds, “She volunteered to go first you know. Fitz wanted to, obviously, but May overrode him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because we knew you would get all worked up and anxious about it,” Bobbi supplies bluntly, but not unkindly.

“What if this doesn’t work?” Jemma says quietly.

“Then it doesn’t work, and you run out of time, and you die, and we’d have wasted all our time for nothing.” 

Jemma glances at her in surprise. Bobbi shrugs.

“That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Jemma manages.

“Look,” says Bobbi, “here’s the truth, and I’m only gonna say it once, so you should listen, okay? We love you, Jemma. We’re a team. No one gets left behind. Don’t tell me if this was Fitz, or Skye, or anyone else on the team that you wouldn’t be the first to give up all of your time.”

“But that’s different—”

“It’s not. It’s exactly the same. Friends, saving friends. This is how it works. We’re a family now, Jemma. You can’t get rid of us. You’re stuck with us. And this is for life. Probably even after too, because I’m sure Hunter would find a way to annoy us even from the grave. Haunt us to irritation.”

Jemma laughs, in spite of herself, and Bobbi grins.

“See? You get it. No more moping, okay? We’re not just doing this because of you. We’re doing this for ourselves, too. Alright?”

“Alright.”

“Great.” Bobbi extends a hand. “Now, you wanna come and see the process? Fitz misses you.” 

“I saw him five minutes ago,” she can’t help but laugh.

“He’s a needy one,” Bobbi counters, throwing a blanket over Jemma’s shoulders. “But if I were you I’d cut him some slack. After all, you’ve given him a hell of a week. He’s worried about you. Besides, I’d give him some slack anyway, just because you two are cute. I’m even considering softening the mandatory Big Sister speech.”

“You don’t even  _ have  _ a Big Sister speech.”

“I’ll bet you twenty bucks that I can use Trip to blackmail Skye into making dinner.”

“You’re on.”

 

 

_ xx 33 minutes _

 

It’s Skye’s turn for the transfer, and she’s looking kind of pale but still grinning widely as her and Mack tell a story about the time they accidentally crashed Lola and tried to hide the evidence from Coulson for a month only to find out that he’d known all along.

It’s actually a funny story, but Jemma can’t fully enjoy it, jittering nervously on the end of the bed, wrapping her blanket tighter and tighter around her as she stares at the numbers ticking down on her wrist.

“Hey.” There’s a nudge at her shoulder and a smile from Fitz. He hesitates, glancing at the team in the room, before pressing a shy kiss to her cheek.

Jemma has to bite hard to swallow down her smile so it isn’t ridiculous, even as Skye coos and Trip laughs and Hunter throws a pillow and yells, “Get a room!” even though he and Bobbi have done far worse in public (although she prefers not to think about that). 

She thinks about pulling him in for a proper kiss, because she  _ wants  _ to, but she’s feeling a little short of breath right now so she resolves to save it for later. It’s kind of funny, but she almost isn’t sure whether it’s her lack of her time or the chaste kiss that makes her feel so dizzy and breathless. It might even be a combination of both.

She glances down at her timer one more time, and if recognising her fear, Fitz’s leg jumps up and down.

“Can we make this go any faster?”

“We’re going as fast as can, Fitz,” says Mack lightly.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know, sorry.”

 

 

_ xx 10 minutes _

 

They’ve got ten minutes to go and Fitz still has to give up his two months. 

“Come on, come on,” Skye pleads as the time ticks down second by second. Everyone’s eyes are fixed on the drainer. Everyone except Fitz, whose gaze is trained on her like he can’t quite stop looking. How could she have ever missed that look?

 

 

_ xx 3 minutes _

 

“Two months!” Triplett announces in relief. “And not a moment too soon.” 

Fitz moves to unplug it, but Bobbi stops him.

“Wait! It’s still draining!”

All of a sudden, Jemma’s heart plummets. “What?”

“I set it to two months, I swear,” Skye panics. 

“It’s going faster,” Mack warns, “Three months, three and a half… four months..,”

“Do something,” Jemma whispers, lip quivering. This is _not_ happening, Bobbi promised it woudn’t malfunction.. They were so close.. 

“Jemma, you’re down to two minutes,” Fitz says in alarm, and in that moment, she can pinpoint when he makes his decision. “Pull the drainer out, transfer the five months and pull it over to your timer.”

She shakes her head. “No!” 

“Jemma, it has to be  _ now _ ,” says Fitz, dangerously insistent, and she grabs for his arm before he can pull it off himself.

“ _ No _ ! I pull it out now and your timer bleeds itself dry! That’s  _ not  _ happening. Not  _ ever _ , okay?” Features fierce, she turns. “Bobbi—”

“On it.”

“There isn’t a  _ way _ , you need to take the time,” Fitz insists, eyes wide and angry;  _ pleading _ .

“Jemma’s down to one minute, Fitz is escalating to nine months,” Mack interjects, voice tense. “Whatever you’re doing, it needs to happen now.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Jemma decides, taking a step back. Maybe some things are inevitable, because she thought she’d found a way to avoid this, but in the end, every outcome boils down to one thing: her death.

“Thirty-four seconds!” Mack warns. His eyes are apologetic, but one glance at Jemma and he’s pinning Fitz’s arm down so he can’t do anything about it.

“I’m not going to do anything,” Jemma says again, slowly, because that seems to solidify the fact. Skye’s eyes are wide in horror; Trip looks torn, but it’s Fitz who’s most distraught. But it’s only fair, she supposes. Fitz has saved her so many times,  _ countless  _ times. It’s  _ her  _ turn to save him.

“Twenty seconds,” Skye gasps out, and Jemma sways. The loss of time is getting to her. There are spots clouding her vision, Fitz is blurring in and out of focus but she can still hear him yelling and struggling.

There’s a, “To  _ hell  _ with this,” and then her vision goes black. 

 

 

_ xx -4 hours _

 

“Hey.” There’s a soft, familiar, voice, and her eyes crack open slowly, immediately squinting from the light. And it sort of feels like deja-vu, because she’s staring up at a cream ceiling, with Fitz seated in the chair next to her bed.

“Is heaven real?” she wonders. Her immediate conclusion is  _ no _ as soon as he laughs. His laugh is too  _ real  _ to ever be fabricated.

“Unknown,” he confirms, with a smile almost as bright as the glaring ceiling light. “You can still pay homage to your thermodynamics theory.”

She smiles at him lazily, a warm, tired feeling spreading throughout her body. “I’m glad. It’s a nice theory, don’t you think?”

“It is,” he agrees, hand reaching out for hers tentatively. It still sort of amazes her that Fitz can be so sweepingly shy and tender, even after all they’ve seen and done and admitted. She squeezes his hand and is immeasurably pleased when this elicits a smile. “You’re.. You’re not going to ask what happened?”

She thinks for a moment. “No. We’re safe and we’re happy and that’s all I care about.” But after a while, at his sceptical look, she relents, “Oh, alright, I’m dying to know what happened.”

“Oh, good, I was starting to get worried,” he teases. 

“Fitz! Just tell me! Is everyone alright?”

“Everyone’s fine,” he says quickly. 

She swats at him. “Then stop delaying and tell me what happened!”

“It was Skye. She used herself as a—a transmitter of sorts. Quite brilliant, really. Connected herself up, fed the time in both directions without losing a drop herself.”

“But that’s..” Jemma gapes, “Fitz, that’s  _ inhuman _ ! That’s physically  _ impossible _ .” 

“ _ Yeah _ , which is why I ran a few tests while you were.. um, out. There’s something  _ different _ about Skye’s cell structure, Jemma. She’s not—I don’t know what it is of how she did it. Bobbi thinks she might have been exposed to something, but the point is, we were  _ literally _ saved by a  _ miracle _ .”

She grips his hand, eyes shining. “Fitz, think of all the people we could save with this!”

To her surprise, his expression softens, so tender that it makes her heart skip a beat.  

“Only you could be literally seconds away from dying and still care about others.”

“I’m not seconds away any more,” she protests, smile wide. ”I’m fine.”

Fitz is quiet for a few minutes, and Jemma takes the time to reflect on just how  _ lucky  _ she is. Not just for being alive, but for her friends and her family and Fitz, and it’s all a little overwhelming but  _ brilliant _ .

“Do you think it will work? The vaccine, I mean?” Fitz asks, snapping her out of her stupor.

“It will,” she assures him. “And if it doesn’t.. well, it doesn’t matter. I’ve got everything — well,  _ most  _ things that I want in life.”

“It matters to  _ me _ ,” he insists.

“Yes, but you’re awfully particular,” she teases.

“It’s not funny.”

“It kind of is,” she prompts, pleased when he finally returns her smile. “It’ll be  _ fine _ , Fitz. We’ll work it out. We always do. It’s our thing.”

He blinks, amused. “We have a thing?”

“Yes,” she says seriously. “A thing. Our thing.”

Fitz laughs, and it’s kind of glorious, until his features morph into hesitant, and she frowns at him.

“What’s wrong?”

“Is this… Are we…?”

She widens her eyes. “Fitz, what we did—what I said, those weren’t split-second choices. I didn’t make them because I was going to die, I made them because I meant them. I..” She pauses, glances up at him shyly. “I want this. If you still do.”

“Okay.” He breathes out a sigh of relief, eyes bright. “Okay, yeah, good. Because—Because I’m not sure I could have gone back. If this wasn’t real, I mean.”

Jemma squeezes his hand again. “This is real, Fitz. As real as it’s ever been.”

“Okay… so… Jemma Simmons..” Fitz pauses for only a moment, seeming to bundle all his courage up, and then: “Do you want to go on a date with me?”

To his surprise, she laughs, head twisting on the pillow to smile fondly at him. “Fitz, I think we’re beyond first dates.”

“Yeah,” he concedes. “Yeah, I know. But.. I want to do this properly. I don’t want this just to be some impulse decision we made while your death was looming. I want it to be normal. I want it to be like us.”

And really, Jemma muses, that’s what it all comes to. Jemma Simmons and Leopold Fitz, against the world. And she’s sort of okay with that.

“Will a kiss suffice as an answer?” she laughs, and at his wide-eyed nod, she pulls him down. 

Maybe some things are inevitable. Maybe some things are not. But in the end, she really thinks that it doesn’t matter. It’s  _ her  _ choice, it’s  _ her  _ life. 

And she chooses  _ this _ .

 

 

(And later; 

"Hey, Fitz?"

"If you ever pull a stunt like that again, I will end you."

"Duly noted."

"But for the record... You did. Impress me, I mean.")

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap. It's really up to you how the story ends. Maybe Jemma dies anyway. Maybe they live happily ever after and develop a cure that makes the world a happier place (personally, I'm gunning for the latter). Thanks for sticking around! I'm also @perthshirekisses on Tumblr if you want to come chat with me <3


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